“But how can they explode like that?” Wylan wondered. “The dragon in the forge and Matthew? How did they just explode?”
Marcella shrugged. “Apparently, it’s something we can all do. Of course, wyverns to a lesser degree. It’s suicide, but it’s effective.”
“But…how?” Wylan wondered.
“Giving in to your power,” Leaghan said. “Marcella and I searched for answers as to the why. Wyverns and dragons can sink into their power, let it take them over. Once it consumed them, it has nowhere to go and it radiates outward.”
“Thanks to the fire fruit,” Leaghan chimed in. “We think other people can also control that power within us, similarly as you stopped the blue dragon from using its power any more on you.”
That seemed like a diplomatic way of saying they exploded.
Wylan shook her head, trying to take it all in.
“What about you?” Josef wondered. “Did you find any other people?”
“You could say that,” Wylan told him. “I have to be debriefed. I assume Garrett will call a meeting. Are you able to come?”
Josef nodded. “If Garrett orders it, Millie won’t have a choice.”
Wylan turned to the door, worried that the green wyvern was still there to hear what he said, but she wasn’t.
“Are you kidding me?” Josef asked. “Do you think I’d say something like that when she could hear it?”
“I heard you!” Millie called from down the hall.
Josef’s face went white.
“All right,” Wylan said, rubbing his hand and smiling. “I have to go see Garrett.”
She kissed Josef on the cheek—to which Geffrey made gagging sounds—and turned to leave. She stared at the dwarf.
“You’re the one who saved me before I left,” she said, finally placing him. “I meant to ask, why don’t you have a beard?”
The entire room seemed to take a collective breath, and Wylan wondered if she’d said something wrong. Was she not supposed to ask about his beard?
Millie stepped into the doorway, her eyes intent on the dwarf. Whether she was there to see his answer, or to heal Wylan if she needed it, she couldn’t tell.
“Made a mistake on the statue in the Dwarven District,” he grunted. If she’d said something offensive, the dwarf didn’t seem to mind.
“That’s it?” Josef asked. “A simple mistake?”
“It ruined the entire statue!” the dwarf nearly exploded. Wylan took that time to slip out of the door before she was in the middle of an argument, and in case Millie needed to do any damage control after.
Wylan was right. Garrett wanted a full debriefing, and then he called a council meeting. It had come together faster than Wylan had thought, wyverns streaming through the doorway into the rounded room. Josef had been brought in a wheelchair, and while Wylan understood the need for it, it made her squirm a little to see him unable to walk yet…or at least, not allowed to walk by Millie. Millie was the one who brought him, and she insisted on being there with him in case he needed anything.
Leaghan had been summoned as well, since she was likely the one who’d be casting the first of the illumination spells on the roofs. Once everyone was settled, Garrett took his seat on the dais behind his long table. As he sat down, all conversations halted.
“There are many things to discuss today, one of which is the passing of Matthew Vortagen. It is a dark time for wyverns as we mourn this loss, but we must overcome, and we must select another to take his place on the council. That, however, can wait. More urgently is news Wylan Atwater has brought to us from her first mission. Wylan, the floor is yours.”
She didn’t know protocol for council meetings, she stood so that others could see her easily, though seated around a round table, they were able to see her without her standing.
Wylan told them her story. She didn’t leave out a single detail, besides the bit about the plague bearer. That had nothing to do with the council, and it was a private matter she didn’t feel like discussing with them. She’d made a tenuous peace with it, she didn’t need to slow herself while they did as well.
When she got to Lastilor, many of the wing leaders began muttering to one another. Some of them were too young to remember Lastilor, but most of them remembered the city. She heard many words exchanged among the wing leaders, the main word that stuck out was Sister City. She told them of the differences she’d seen there, and how dragons hadn’t plagued them for many years, thanks to a stone they used in conjunction with a rune to help ward off the dragons.
“Carbon stone,” Leaghan spoke up. “I know the spell.”
Wylan nodded. She felt a great tension leave her shoulders then. She’d worried that it would take time for Leaghan to find out the details of the spell, or the stone they’d used. It seemed Leaghan was a step ahead of her.
“But how can we expect it to keep dragons from here?” Cassandra Claremont asked, the filtered sun coming from the windows high above shone off her pale skin like the underside of a fish. “They already know precisely where we are. A little subterfuge wouldn’t stop them from attacking.”
“I agree,” Illian, the dark-haired, purple wing leader said. “In the last couple days, we’ve been attacked many times. They’ve begun using sandstorms to hide their attacks.”
“This works different,” Wylan cut in before the council could get too rallied against the idea. “When I was flying toward Lastilor, it disoriented me. The light twisted my vision somehow, and I found myself flying away from it, even though I didn’t mean to. There were scores of dragons around me, and I watched as they were turned away, and forgot their path long before I did. Dragons can’t see well during twilight or dawn. They avoid the light because it puts them at a disadvantage, and so they avoided Lastilor.”
“That could be good for us,” cut in Crespit, the yellow wing leader. “We could fashion shields like that, for all those who go out on missions. They could unveil them when dragons attacked, maybe strike back.”
“Maybe even help against the drakes that captured you,” Leaghan suggested.
There was more muttering, but Garrett thumped his gavel, and they all fell silent.
“This isn’t a matter to be voted on by the council,” Garrett said. “Drex, is it possible to get a hundred or more sheets of thin metal for the roofs?”
The dwarf nodded and fingered his chin as if he were trying to twirl a beard that wasn’t there. “What ore?” He raised an eyebrow to Wylan.
“It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s reflective.”
“That will be a lot of work for me,” Leaghan announced.
“They did it without wizards,” Wylan said. “Well, not precisely without wizards, but they don’t have a living wizard as we do. Their yellow wyverns channeled wizards, and through the wyverns the spell was cast.”
“Crespit,” Garrett said to the yellow wing leader. “See that your yellows are able to connect with dead wizards, and we will begin the project. A simple illumination spell?” Garrett asked Leaghan.
“Yes. Marcone called it a light spell. We will need much more carbon stone than what we have,” Leaghan said. “I only have a couple left in the keep.”
“All right,” Garrett nodded. “From now on, anyone who leaves the city on a mission will be looking for destroyed towns, and these stones. Have them see Wizard Windstar before they leave, so they know what they’re looking for.”
The wing leaders all nodded.
“Now,” Garrett leaned forward, his hands steepled together. “On to the wing leader for the red wyverns.”
Wylan wasn’t sure if she was supposed to stay for this or not. To create less of a stir, she sat down. But just as she sat down, the very air seemed to turn to fire, and a voice called out.
“You will serve to strengthen the wards!”
Fire swarmed the council hall. Flames licked up the walls and devoured tapestries. Black smoke billowed into the air, clogging out the filtered rays of the sun. Wylan didn’t have to think
about it. Before she could figure out where the attack was coming from, Lissandra had bubbled to the surface, and the wyvern soul forced her shift. She grabbed Josef in her talons, and raced up toward the ceiling, high above the raging fires and the screaming wing leaders below. Garrett was a blue wyvern, and he’d quickly woven an orb of water around himself. He was in the process of expanding it outwards, to encapsulate more of the hall, but wing leaders were already beginning to burn.
More bodies shifted, and more wyverns joined Wylan at the gallery around the windows.
Josef had pushed a wall of water around himself, quenching the fires, but not before it had singed his hair and ate away at his clothing.
Millie hadn’t shifted nearly as quickly, and she was burning, but healing herself as quickly as it happened. Wylan couldn’t imagine the pain she must be feeling, to have her skin burned over and over.
Wylan’s eyes scanned the room below. Leaghan stood at the edge of the table, an orb of shimmering light keeping the fire from her. Millie healing herself as quickly as the fire burned her, though she was in obvious pain. And Garrett stood, his hand out, an orb of water around him.
Checking to make sure Josef was secure, Wylan leapt from the gallery and glided to the fray. She spotted a little boy near the doorway, his hand out, fire licking from every finger. He was a small boy, and at first glance she thought it was Geffrey, but this boy’s head was bald, his mouth was open and black, and his eyes were twisted with rage.
This wasn’t a normal boy.
She felt the fire wyrd build within her, but this time, instead of blasting out a burst of her own fire, Wylan felt for the threads of the boy’s magic. It was a different form of magic. It felt, somehow, arcane. She couldn’t describe it, but his fire felt older than hers. Less serpentine. Still, it was fire, and she gripped hold of it, and then leached the heat away.
The boy’s face fell into a mask of shock, and the flames vanished.
“Wyverns,” he sneered. “You will all serve to strengthen the wards!”
Leaghan stood beside Wylan, her hand in her pocket, the other gripping her staff.
“You have no power here,” she told him. “Be gone.”
The boy began to laugh. Wylan swiveled her head toward the elf, and stared at her in wonder. What was she thinking? This boy just displayed more power in the last minute than Wylan had ever seen Leaghan command, even when the wild magics controlled her.
“I hold all the power here!” He held out his hands, and lightning flared forth. Moments before Wylan was struck with the maelstrom, Leaghan jumped in front of her, her hand lashing out. She gripped a cube of sorts within her hand that she thrust into the lightning.
There was a loud crack, as if stone had split in two, and Wylan worried that the ceiling was about to come down on them. A moment later, she realized the lightning had redirected to the containment cube in Leaghan’s outstretched hand. The lightning wasn’t attacking the object, but was being leached into the object.
The boy’s face twisted in horror. He knew what was happening, even if Wylan didn’t fully understand the magics in place, and he didn’t like it. He tried to pull his hands back, as if to stop the lightning, but nothing happened. The power was being pulled from him now, and he had no control over it.
“How does it feel, Andraal?” Leaghan sneered. She took a step forward, and the lightning followed the box. The containment cube glowed a soft, orange color. “To have your powers turned on you, as you threatened to do to me? How does it feel to have so much magic betray you? You, who learned the ways of the ether. You, who stole the lives of so many wizards, now having it all stolen from you.”
His color paled, not like he was scared or nervous, but like he was losing form. As she watched, the boy became translucent until the final wisps of what was the apparition faded into lightning, and was drawn into the object Leaghan held.
When he was gone, when the hum of magic faded from the air, Leaghan turned toward Wylan, a stunned expression on her face.
“I did it,” she whispered, holding up an iron cube with engravings on the side. They were engravings Wylan recognized from her time in Lastilor. It was an object to trap magic. A containment cube! It seemed Wylan’s questions and hopes were being answered.
Wylan shifted to human, and cupped the wizard’s hands in her own. “You made this?”
Leaghan nodded, a nervous smile splitting her face. “Iron,” she said.
“Why iron?” Wylan wondered. “Does it have to be iron?”
Leaghan shook her head. “Iron isn’t suggested for containment cubes.”
“Why?” Wylan wondered.
“Because it kills whatever magic is trapped inside.” A wicked grin split her face. “Me, a fledgling wizard who barely knows how to conjure light, just managed to kill an arch-mage.”
Wylan laughed at the look on her face. “And you’ve unknowingly made life much more enjoyable in Darubai. I have a mission for you.”
Wylan finally answered Josef’s question. It was yes. Aariac had been right. They loved one another, and that didn’t seem to be stopping. Maybe her misgivings had less to do with Josef rushing things, and more to do with her worrying what kind of life he would be getting involved with. But there was danger everywhere, and with everything that had been happening in the city, they didn’t want to wait.
Josef had planned everything, much to Wylan’s relief. The wedding was held on an overcast morning, in the middle of the Fire Fruit Forest. She wore a gown of red, while he wore a light-blue tunic and black trousers. It wasn’t a big ceremony, but many people attended.
He’d never known his family, and she didn’t want to give up her surname, so Josef Decker became Josef Atwater. He told her that he’d gladly be part of her family, that he’d take her name because he felt that was the one thing he could do for the in-laws he’d never meet—carry their name on for generations to come.
Humans exchanged rings as tokens of their love, but wyverns exchanged scales. He’d slipped a necklace over her head that held one of the scales from his chest bone. It had been mounted in opal, and when the blue scale settled between her breast, she could feel the smallest thrum of water magic seep into her skin.
Her own heart scale had been set in onyx, and she could tell from the look in his eyes that he felt the slightest tempest of fire magic play over his skin.
They settled back into their apartments and after a couple weeks, it was as though nothing had really changed. Wylan began to wonder why she’d even feared marrying him in the first place. They’d already been living a life together, all that changed was his name.
For her bravery in the council hall, she was unanimously voted to lead the red wyverns, mainly because most of the reds were hotheaded creatures that could rarely be reasoned with. Wylan, on the other hand, seemed mostly immune to the wyvern soul that raged within her. She was level-headed and more diplomatic than the others. And better yet, her rebellion of the racial tensions against dragons made for good public relations among the council.
Most of the yellow wyverns worked together under the supervision of Marcella, channeling the ghosts of ancient wizards to work on the sheets of metal that would adorn their roofs. Dwarves continued to draw up plans for new structures, or repairs to the roofs of buildings that were still safe and sound. There were plans all around that would see Darubai brought back to some kind of splendor, even if it wasn’t the splendor it had been before.
Leaghan continued to work with the dwarves and the wyverns, ensuring the patrols knew what they were looking for, and that the carbon stones were ground well. She worked with the yellow wyverns until all of the metal had been inscribed.
The day the sheets of metal were installed on buildings throughout the city was a day of celebration. The city streets teemed with people, festooned in whatever finery that remained to them, and drink and food was shared by all. Wylan and Josef stood on their balcony, wrapped in a sheet with her tucked under his arm, and they watched the revelry from thei
r rooms with a smile on their faces.
The city wouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief until some time had passed without a dragon attack. For now, constant dragon siege was a way of life for them, and that defensive thinking wouldn’t change anytime soon.
The hate of the dragons remained, but the main threat had been erased. There was no more talk of sending the dragons beyond the wards, and the dragons seemed to warm to the humans now that they’d done a good job of ridding the city of what threatened them.
Dragon Aerie could be seen teeming with dragons now, and people went there to see the dragons, and sometimes even talk with them.
Geffrey went to live in the palace to keep a watchful eye on Kira Dragonkin, in case another arch-mage schlepped from the ether and tried to control people again. He was worried more than most that she might become the pawn of a power greater than herself. He was a yellow wyvern, and thought it was best a yellow take charge of her so that he could see the subtle changes about her that might indicate mind control.
Aariac healed well, though he walked with a limp now, and sometimes needed a cane to help himself out. He thought the cane was a distinguishing amenity rather than a hindrance. And it helped him make all kinds of attacks on Wylan and Josef. There were many times Josef would pass the elf, only to be goosed with the end of the cane, or when Wylan took an unexpected thump to the back of the head.
On one sunny day, shortly after the illumination spell glimmered from the tops of buildings, Aariac came to Wylan with news he found rather amazing. The strange orange flower she’d found in the caldera of the drakes had sprouted. With everything that had happened while they were gone, it seemed like an omen of good things to come for the city. It also showed that the elves weren’t completely hopeless when it came to creating a green district to remind them of the homes that were destroyed months before. A place where they could feel the energy of the earth they’d felt so cut off from.
Dragon Forged: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 3) Page 19