by Sam Ferguson
The beast stepped in close and tested her shell with a finger. Kyra studied the monster, noting that it was nearly humanoid in shape, somewhat like a great ape. It stood roughly nine feet tall, with arms and legs as thick as tree trunks. Each hand had two fingers and a thumb tipped with sharp, curved claws. The torso was extremely blocky and covered with a dark gray fur, but as solid as if the animal had been made out of boulders. There were no ears that she could see upon the creature’s head, but it had three eyes that watched her every move.
Just then the creature rotated slightly as his body jerked to the side and something slammed into the shell down and toward her left. Kyra just barely caught a glimpse of the massive tail as its spikes clashed against her protective shell and then scraped back across the stone. Nothing she had ever heard or read about fit the description of what she saw in front of her. Her shell held against the tail’s assault, but the vibration she felt from the strike was enough to get her refocused on the fight at hand.
The beast cocked its arm back as a human might before launching a punch, then brought it forward with tremendous force, striking with its fist against the shell. Kyra jumped back as a small fracture appeared in the translucent shell, leaking a golden light through the crack. She knew if she did not think of something, she was going to fail this exercise.
Kyra summoned forth a spear made of ice and magically hurled it at the beast. With unnatural speed, the monster turned aside and allowed the spear to sail past. It then turned back and growled with a voice so loud that it shook the shell around Kyra and made her chest vibrate from within. As she watched thin lines of spittle drip from the beast’s fangs, she felt the urge to scream and cower in fear.
The young sorceress did not let it stop her. She gathered her courage and summoned forth another column of fire, just under the monster’s feet. The flames rose up and singed the creature’s hair, but the spell did little to deter the creature. The monster leapt up out of the flames and landed on the shell that protected Kyra. As the ward started to crack, she heard many popping sounds and saw that little tendrils of energy were shooting off in every direction as the magic began to unravel. Tiny fissures tore through the shell, informing Kyra that she had only moments left before the beast could get her.
She knew that if she wanted to find her mother’s killer, she could not admit defeat to Cyrus now. If she asked him for help, there was no telling how long it would be before she was able to avenge her mother’s murder.
The sorceress in training acted on impulse rather than wisdom, trusting instincts to know what to do. She darted out to the right, purposefully destroying the already fractured ward spell to create a directional blast at the same time. The explosion was near deafening, and the flash of light that came from the giant bolt of lightning she called forth out of the ground blinded and deafened her momentarily. She heard the beast howl as it was thrown to the side. She could hear the howling grow distant as the creature’s body was flung upward from where the shell had been. A few seconds later there was a large crash as the monster landed several yards away from her.
Assuming that she only had a second or two before the beast regained its senses, she turned and ran toward where it had landed. Her three remaining orbs of light hovered over her, following her as she sprinted through the darkness. The creature roared again, somewhat incoherently, but strong enough that Kyra took the threat seriously.
With a flick of her left wrist she cast the three orbs of light at the creature. They slammed into his face and pummeled it. The gargantuan beast swatted at its own face, clawing and ripping at the orbs of light, trying to get them off. The distraction was exactly what Kyra was hoping for. She called forth several large spears of ice over the beast’s body and dropped them down. Two of them missed, but three others struck their target. One drove through the beast’s left thigh and the other two pierced its torso. Kyra jumped into the air and called forth a ball of lightning between her hands. She came down on the beast’s chest, driving the ball of lightning into its face before tucking into a roll and escaping just before the beast swatted at her with its claws. The beast writhed and howled on the ground in pain, but Kyra was not done yet.
Remembering how she had defeated the ghoul at the dragon’s nest, she called forth a tornado and dropped it down on the beast. The wind swirled furiously, sucking in the black vapors from the area around her. Next she brought a column of fire down from the sky into the center of the tornado. The beast spun slowly, sliding across the stone and grasping with its claws to try and regain control. When the column of fire drove through the monster, the fight was over. The beast let out one final howl and then collapsed inward on itself as the tornado pulled it in and crushed its now lifeless body.
In the distance, Kyra could hear slow clapping. A moment later she found herself back in the classroom, standing in the middle of the floor with Cyrus near the door of the room. The old wizard was smiling ever so slightly and continuing to clap. Kyra breathed heavily and moved to lean upon a nearby desk to catch her breath.
“I have never seen someone so young defeat the Baukin before. In fact, I would wager most of the recent graduates from Kuldiga Academy could not defeat such a creature.”
Kyra, still breathing heavily from the exertion, nodded her appreciation of the compliment. She did not collapse as she had after the fight with the creature at the dragon’s nest, but she could feel that she had used much of her energy in the fight. Still, she wanted to show strength to the wizard. She was tired of training, she wanted the real fight. Surely if she was half as good as he said she was, then she should be ready. She pressed off from the desk and forced her burning lungs to make do with shorter, even-paced breaths.
“So when do we leave?” Kyra asked.
Cyrus stopped clapping and looked at her, confused.
“Leave?” He shook his head and folded his arms. “We aren’t going anywhere.”
Kyra’s face flushed and she could feel the anger rising within her.
“Surely the thing that killed my mother was not more powerful than this thing,” she said.
Cyrus pointed at her and shook his head in disbelief.
“You think your mother would fall to this? This is not the same being that broke into your home and killed her. This creature didn’t even have any magical powers. It had a natural resistance to magic, and an inordinate amount of strength, but this was no demon. It is going to take months of training before you are ready.”
Kyra wanted to argue. No, she wanted to fight. Perhaps the old man was playing it safe because he was scared. There was a part of the young apprentice that wanted to test her strength against the wizard and see who came out on top. Luckily, the rational part of her brain took over as she remembered her mother’s words. Kyra chose quiet acquiescence and the appearance of submission. She forced the anger out and nodded her head. She would continue with this day’s lesson, that way Cyrus would have no reason to watch her or restrict her activities. Then, when she was free for the day, she would take Leatherback and see if they could hunt down clues of their own.
After the apprentice had calmed down, Cyrus motioned to the books on the far shelf near the desk.
“Go and pull the book entitled Masters of Shadow and use the index to find the section on what is called a shade. The rest of today will be spent studying that creature. You are not ready to fight it yet, but I believe that is what broke into your mother’s home.”
Kyra turned, hiding her smile as she walked away from the wizard toward the bookshelf. Her mother had been right, the appearance of submission would give her the opportunity she needed to make her own choices. She hungrily pulled the book down from the shelf and took it to the nearest desk. She flipped through the pages until she found the section she had been instructed to read. Glancing at where the section began and ended, she noted that there were nearly one hundred pages about this creature. She flipped through from the back of the section toward the front to get an idea of what she would be reading.
She stopped when she saw a page with a subtitle that read ‘Companions’ and had a very strange picture sketched next to it. It wasn’t exactly the same, but then again she wasn’t sure that any pencil rendering could provide an accurate depiction of the creature it purported to show. There on the page before her she saw the ethereal creature she had fought in the dragon’s nest. Now she was more certain than ever that it had not come for the egg; it had come for her. It was called a Bibkin Wraith and was said to be a servant of the creature known as a Shade.
“Read it from the beginning,” Cyrus chastised as he moved toward his desk. “You can’t just start a subject in the middle.”
Kyra nodded and flipped the pages to the beginning of the section, not wanting to give the old wizard any reason to question her curiosity about the strange wraith.
CHAPTER 14
In the late afternoon when she had finished her reading assignments that Cyrus had given her, Kyra snuck back to the classroom to take the book about shades. She slipped it into her satchel between the other books that she normally took to read to Leatherback. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to deal with Njar just yet. If Cyrus wasn’t of the opinion that Kyra was ready for the shade, then Njar would be three times more defensive about the idea. Kyra wasn’t sure how she would escape the satyr’s scrutiny, but she knew she would think of something.
She closed the satchel and opened the portal. She could see the satyr chief sitting near Leatherback on the ground, playing his panpipes. She moved through the portal, arriving just a few feet away from Leatherback.
The dragon rose to stand, towering over her now as he stood nearly twenty feet at the shoulder. His horns had grown tremendously, and had she not known him from the time he had hatched, she might have mistaken him for a fearsome beast. But she knew better.
The dragon lowered its head down toward her and allowed her to pet him between the eyes. It softly nuzzled its snout against her body and then dropped back down to the ground with a tha-WUMP! The entire glade shook and the aspen trees vibrated as the massive creature flopped onto the ground. Kyra nearly lost her balance, but was able to reach out and steady herself on one of Leatherback’s horns.
The satyr chief rose to his feet and moved around Leatherback’s large head to hand Kyra her staff.
“He has received the magic well,” the satyr said. “He is roughly a third of the size he will be when he is fully mature.”
Kyra looked at Leatherback in astonishment. If he was only a third as big as he would be eventually, then he would be nearly one hundred and forty feet long. He would tower over the trees in the glade and be a veritable moving fortress of teeth and fire. Now, for the first time, she understood Njar’s apprehension. Any creature of that size could destroy entire settlements and be nearly unstoppable. Of course, Kyra knew from her books how large dragons could become, but it was another thing entirely to see his sheer size in person and try to picture him three times larger than what she saw in front of her. As it was now, he could swallow her in one bite if he wanted to, just as he used to do to the squirrels they had hunted together.
Leatherback must have sensed her wonderment, for he cocked his head so that his eye could look at her more directly, and he smiled at her with his slightly parted lips and kind eyes. As Kyra looked upon him she knew that he would never hurt her, or anyone else. She patted his head again and then turned to speak with Njar.
“I will need to stop accelerating his growth for a short while,” the satyr said.
“I thought you said it was better for him if he grew as fast as possible?”
The satyr chief nodded his head and shrugged sheepishly.
“The truth is I’m tired. To sustain that kind of magic, even here in this grove of sacred aspens, a tremendous effort is required. For now I need to scale back my efforts. I can of course continue to augment the grove to ensure that the curse does not come within this area, but it will be a few weeks before I can return to helping him grow faster. Still, as it is, I believe he has made tremendous progress. He shows no sign of the taint, and he is able to hunt with you for extended periods of time outside the grove. Truly it is a wonder.”
Kyra had a question she wanted to ask, but she did not want the satyr to catch any hint of why she was asking it. She had to be careful to hide her excitement. She took a couple of slow breaths to calm her nerves and slow her beating pulse, leaning her staff against one of Leatherback’s large horns and using both palms to rub a spot between his eyes that he particularly liked. Then she turned to Njar and smiled.
“You will stay here with him, right?” Phrasing it this way, rather than asking if he was leaving out right, seemed the safer approach.
The satyr shook his head. “I will stay until nightfall. After you leave, I’ll return to my village. It’s just for one night. He will be safe here in the grove until I return in the morning.” He smiled reassuringly and patted her on the shoulder. “He has already hunted today. I guess he couldn’t wait to sate his hunger, so I rode him and we found three elk. It likely won’t hold him for very long, but he’ll probably last through the night on that.”
Kyra’s mouth fell open and she grabbed the satyr’s hand in hers and nearly jumped with excitement.
“You rode him?” The satyr opened his mouth to speak, but Kyra did not give him the chance to answer. “He flew? I mean, he actually flew and you could ride him?”
Gesturing toward Leatherback Njar suggested, “How about you go and see for yourself.” The satyr smiled and gently pushed her toward Leatherback.
Kyra turned around to see Leatherback was smiling and purring softly.
“When were you going to tell me you could fly?”
Leatherback emitted that soft, high-pitched squeak that Kyra had once categorized as a growl. He still couldn’t talk, but she could tell he was excited to share this with her.
“If you sit on his neck just behind his horns, you can hold them for support,” Njar advised.
Kyra didn’t need to be told twice. Snatching up her staff, she ran over and jumped onto Leatherback’s neck. After sliding the staff between a few of the top horns which grew like a crown at the back of his head, she reached up and grabbed the two horns closest to her, and a moment later, the large dragon leapt into the air, climbing high into the sky above the grove.
Kyra looked down and watched the world fall away from her. The satyr shrank to the size of a bottle and then the grove became the size of a rock. A few moments later he disappeared entirely as Leatherback took her high into the clouds where the air was thin and cold. She laughed and smiled, screaming his name and shouting for joy. Leatherback stretched his great wings, soaring through the air, obviously every bit as delighted as she was given his loud and reverberating purr. The two of them circled around in the sky above the clouds. The thick blanket of clouds that shrouded them from the ground below silenced any fears of being discovered. How far they flew, she had no way of knowing. All she knew was that she was having the time of her life. She looked off to the north and saw the far horizon there. She wondered how far Leatherback could fly now.
Was he capable of taking her to the northern lands, escaping both his curse and her prearranged fate?
For a moment she seriously considered instructing him to do just that, but her mother’s memory was forefront in her mind and overrode even her desire for freedom. First, she would hunt the shade. Once it was dead, they would fly north.
For the moment she pushed the thoughts of revenge out of her mind, and went back to enjoying the cold breeze enveloping her and the exhilarating sensation of gliding through the clouds. She and Leatherback flew for a long time before the dragon finally glided gently back down to the glade and set her on the grass. He roared triumphantly and blew a great column of blue fire into the air while she and the satyr both clapped for him and his achievement.
“I should note,” the satyr began, “that it is normally years before a dragon can learn to fly.” Kyra nodded her head silently as tears o
f happiness for her friend fell down her face. “I would say his achievement has earned him a double portion of reading today, wouldn’t you?”
Kyra smiled wide and pulled the book out of her satchel. “I believe it does. With the double portion of reading today, that is four chapters. That means we will finish this book today and know what has become of our dear dragon friend, Gorliad. Shall we get to it then?”
Leatherback let out a high-pitched screech and curled into a ball on the ground. Kyra stepped over the edge of his tail and nestled into his body as he craned his head around and set it next to her on the ground, for it was now far too large to ever lay on her lap again.
“All right, let us see what has become of our friend Gorliad,” she said as she opened the book. They spent the rest of the afternoon reading together in the grove. Kyra managed to finish reading the book just a few minutes after the sun dipped below the western horizon and the first stars appeared in the sky. As she closed the book, Kyra turned and leaned down next to Leatherback’s right ear and whispered into it, then she rose to her feet and opened the portal back to Kuldiga Academy.
Njar motioned for her to wait for a moment. “What did you say to him?”
Kyra looked up to the sky and pointed to where the moon should be. “I was just reminding him that on moonless nights both Aiden and Boba play together.” She felt bad for lying to the satyr, but she knew she had to if she was to have any chance of coming back tonight without him knowing.