Age of Valor: Awakening

by D. E. Morris

  “Great,” Connor muttered. “Well, I guess we wait to hear a scream.” He huffed and swirled his cloak around him, wrapping his arms in the heavy fabric and pulling his hood up. “Can we at least make a fire to get warm again while we just sit here? I nearly froze all my fingers off in the air.”

  Cailin chuckled. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  In no time at all, Cailin had found enough kindling and branches blown away from the nearby forest to have a base for a good fire. She pulled a flint from her pack and lit the dry wood with ease, sitting back on her heels to admire her handiwork. “Cailin Ó Ceallaigh,” Jaryn marveled, “is there nothing you can't do?”

  The question brought laughter to her lips. “Plenty. Believe me.”

  They all gathered around the fire and were comfortable for a time, but eventually, even Jaryn grew restless. “How long has she been gone for?”

  Cailin shrugged and glanced at the sun. “Maybe half an hour?”

  “She's been eaten,” murmured Connor in a sing song voice.

  Looking to Jaryn, Cailin asked, “Should I go look for her?”

  He let go of a deep sigh and looked at the towering rocks before them. “I suppose yelling her name wouldn't really work?”

  “No, probably not. I tried telepathy a few minutes ago, but the mountains must be too thick between us.”

  “You should probably have a look, then. I'd like to see if we can find that island sooner rather than later.”

  Cailin nodded. “Agreed.” She started away from the other two and prepared herself to shift, but just as the transformation began, a bluebird dove from the sky with a chorus of chirps. Cailin straightened, pushing the shift from human to dragon away as Misuzu changed back into her human form seamlessly. “I was just about to come look for you.”

  “Sorry.” Misuzu tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “It's beautiful in there. You can't tell from the air, but the grass is much greener around the lake than it is out here, almost like winter had come and gone weeks ago. The water feels unseasonably warm, too.”

  “You touched the water?!” Connor's brows disappeared up into his hairline.

  She blinked, looking from one person to the other. “Was I not supposed to?”

  Connor smacked the palm of his hand to his forehead.

  “Anything else odd?” asked Jaryn.

  “The lake is a near perfect circle, broken only by a small peninsula that goes no more than five feet out and above the water.”

  “Above?” echoed Cailin.

  Misuzu nodded. “It's unsupported and you could swim right under it.”

  Jaryn frowned in thought. “It definitely merits further investigation, but I think we should come back when we have solved our current mysteries and perhaps when it's a bit warmer.”

  “Let's keep going,” Connor agreed, getting to his feet. “I don't want to linger here.”

  “Aye,” Jaryn readily added. “If I remember my geography correctly, Bás is south of here and I don't have a grand desire to visit what's left of it or...” He waggled his fingers teasingly at Connor, “happen upon any restless souls that may be wandering about.”

  Connor smacked his lips together, unimpressed. “You're so funny.”

  Misuzu extinguished the fire with a thought. “Depending on how far out we have to go, we may need to find places to land and shift, even if they're small.”

  “The island is off the northwestern shore, isn't it?” asked Cailin. “Since we decided to come here first because it was on the main land, it makes more sense to fly back up the coast, shift for a small break, then head out to sea from there. I know it sounds time consuming, but it gives us a better shot at finding the island without having to stop in between.”

  Jaryn nodded. “Okay. Let's do it then.”

  The two women shared a nod before splitting apart from the group to shift. It was an uneventful flight back up the western edge of Ibays and a quiet lunch they shared on the beach for a rest before heading out once again. There were no more antics as they proceeded out to sea. They stayed below the clouds to make sure they knew when Ibays was behind them and they could be on the lookout for whatever strange islands might be farther out in the ocean. It wasn't long before the land was far behind them and there was nothing below but cold ocean water. No one said anything, all of them concentrated on the task at hand. Connor pulled a map from a pocket sewn into his cloak to check it and make sure they were going in the right direction. It was all guesswork, they knew, since the island surrounded by mist was not on the maps, but it gave the boy something to do.

  She wasn't sure when it happened, but at one point in their long, monotonous journey, Cailin looked down and saw dolphins swimming below, cresting the whitecaps as they jumped and played with one another. She glided lower, making Connor look down in hopes that she'd found something. When he realized what grabbed her attention, he grinned. Jaryn and Misuzu came lower as well, none of them ever having many chances in their lives to see anything like this.

  “They're beautiful,” Jaryn marveled.

  Mischievous, Cailin went even lower and tilted, dragging the very tip of her wing in the water and sending up a cold rainbow spray behind her. The dolphins dove deeper, not as fond of the dragon as she was of them, but Connor laughed. He leaned over himself, wanting to touch the icy water. He stretched his arm and his fingers to their full extent, reaching as far as he could. The cold had numbed his legs, however, and they couldn't grip onto Cailin as they had when they first started out. In a flurry of swinging arms and legs, he slid off of Cailin's back and into the ocean. Aware of what was happening, Cailin tilted to the other side in an effort to keep him on her, but tipped too much and let her wing get submerged. She was unable to stop her wing from bending back and was jerked to the side, plummeting into the water with a dramatic splash.

  Above, Jaryn readied himself to dive in after them, but Connor's red head popped up out of the water, followed just a second later by Cailin, back in her human form. “Are you all right?” she asked in a panic.

  Connor burst out laughing, treading water where he was. “Can we do that again?”

  Relieved, she splashed water at him. “Absolutely not. We're going to be lucky if we don't freeze to death as it is.” Looking up, she yelled, “A little help?”

  Misuzu dove down as though she were going straight into the water herself. “Wait!” cried Jaryn. “No!” He looked around helplessly as though there were something he could do to save himself, then caught his breath and pulled on Misuzu's mane. “Wait!” Misuzu pulled up just a few inches from the water, and Jaryn pointed to the sky in the distance. “Look. What is that?”

  Cailin helped Connor grab onto one of Misuzu's stubby legs, glancing distractedly in the direction Jaryn indicated. “I don't know. A sea bird? Climb, Connor!”

  “I'm trying! I can't feel my fingers.”

  Jaryn turned around to help pull Connor up, then Cailin as well. He took off his cloak and wrapped it around both Cailin and Connor before returning his attention to the creature in the sky. “That's no bird.”

  That's a dragon.

  With everyone touching Misuzu now, they were all open to communication.

  “Did your ghost island have dragons, Jaryn?” Cailin asked.

  He nodded, eyes fixed on the sight in the distance. “Among other terrifying things, yes.”

  “There are lots of small islands that don't make it on the map,” Connor told her. “They could be wild dragons who live on them as they once did on Dragonspire.”

  Jaryn glanced at the boy. “Dragonspire Mountains have been little more than a graveyard since Tadhg took his rule. It is possible that whatever dragons survived his slaughter fled farther out to sea in an effort to preserve themselves.”

  Cailin's brow wrinkled. “Dragons aren't that smart. I'm sorry, but they're not. At least, not the full blooded ones. They think with their stomachs most of the time, and will go where the food is. Even if there were a bunch of smaller islands, there wou
ld have to be enough of them to sustain life enough to keep the dragons fed. A cluster of islands like that, no matter how small, would be significant enough to make it onto a map.”

  Look.

  More shapes had taken on form in the sky, giant beasts in the distance of different colors, joining with the one Jaryn had originally seen. Several of them came together to form a triangle like migrating geese, following the lead dragon as it shifted its flight path in rapid succession to form ever-changing patterns with the others in the air.

  “They're as in sync as starlings,” Jaryn mused after a few minutes of watching.

  “I wonder what...” Cailin couldn't finish her sentence. She doubled over with a gasp the very second a haunting echo of a whistled melody reached them.

  “Cailin?” Connor turned to her as best as he could, sitting before her, and tried to steady her. “Cailin!”

  “Hold on to her,” Jaryn replied, calm. “She'll be all right once the music stops.” To Misuzu he said, “Look at how they've gone! It's as though they were summoned by the flute.”

  It still doesn't make sense. Why is Cailin effected when I am not? We are both Gaels.

  Jaryn shook his head, both trying to rid himself of the buzzing pain and in a lack of understanding. “Perhaps because you are an Elemental?”

  The music faded and Cailin lifted her head, panting as she had been when she'd come up from under the water. “Doesn't matter,” she managed, pushing her sopping hair from her face as she slowly sat up again. “Elas said he and Mairead don't feel it, but Kenayde and Ashlynn do. There has to be another reason.”

  Jaryn turned to her with appraisal. “You all right?”

  Though there was anger on her face, she nodded and said, “Fine.”

  We should follow after before we lose them.

  “Agreed.” Jaryn shivered in the cold without his warm cloak. “Can we get some cover without the rolling?” No answer ever came from Misuzu but the clouds began to form around them as they slowly made their way forward. She stayed low to the ocean surface so that she would appear as a cloud moving by, only slightly faster than the others.

  I see more dragons.

  The three on Misuzu's back strained to find the familiar shapes but saw nothing. It wasn't long, however, before all of them were shocked into speechlessness at what was taking shape before them. If they appeared as a small cloud among the others, the giant mass before them was a threatening wall of mist that stood like a silent, ominous barrier between them and the other side of the sea. It reached well into the sky and spread itself wider than the entirety of the Ibayish capital. The fog was so thick that it was impossible to see through, but a look down at the waters below revealed dozens of water dragons darting about below the surface, seemingly oblivious to the group flying mere feet above them.

  “It's exactly as the captain described,” whispered Jaryn, afraid to make too much noise. “Pull up, Misuzu. If everything else I was told is accurate, then there are monsters in the coral that surround this place that will come up out of the water and swallow us whole.”

  I'm going to try something, she warned as they rose. Be still, and try not to make any noise.

  The swirling mists around the island began to part in a gentle breeze, pulling back the curtain of mystery surrounding whatever it was that was hidden before them. Within, a black mass seemed to spring up from the sea like a lone pike on a hillside. Misuzu let some of their cover dissipate as they rose higher to get a better grasp of what they had just stumbled upon.

  The island was taller than they'd guessed, almost unnaturally so with it's sheer drop offs and no sea level landings for ships. It was evident that anyone coming to this island would have to come by air or they would be out of luck. Three menacing mountains stood tall on one side of the island, all still capped in snow and pocked with cavernous openings that appeared to lead within. Dragons of varying size and color flew overhead in lazy circles, sometimes descending to enter one of the caves while others joined those in the air, occasionally sending out their trumpeting calls to one another. A small crude village was built into the other side of the island where another mountain stood tall. The rock had been carved into, house fronts built onto it in different levels with a thin, zig-zagging foot path that started at the base of the mountain and worked its way up. Between them was a wide open area, cobbled like modern villages with a tall watchtower, but most of it was grassy and open with pens of different animals and trees dotting the landscape here and there in thin clumps.

  “This isn't an island,” Jaryn whispered in awe, “it's a small country.”

  “Why isn't this on the map?” asked Connor quietly. “It's nearly as big as two of Lerranyth.”

  “And then some,” Cailin added. “We need to get closer. There are obviously people living out here and if we want answers, they would be the ones to ask. Besides, Connor and I could use some dry clothing so we don't freeze to death out here.”

  Connor made a sound like a panicked squeak. “We're going to land there...on the ghost island?”

  Cailin rolled her eyes. “It isn't a ghost island, Connor. Look, those are real dragons, with real people moving about below. We have no other choice at this point. There's no way we can make it back without giving Misuzu a break from her draconic form.”

  Jaryn looked over his shoulder at Connor. “It'll be all right, lad. Whatever happens, stick as close to us as you can. I don't care how friendly or not they may seem here. Stay close.” He bobbed his head and Jaryn turned back around. With a deep breath, he rested his hand on the hilt of his sword to reassure himself of protection, should it be needed. “All right, Misuzu. Let them see us.”

  All around them, the clouds drifted from the dragon as though being pulled away by some unseen force. Under cover it had seemed all the world had turned gray and murky, but they soon saw the sky was speckled with dark clouds. Blue shone through quite brilliantly in large patches, the high sun burning away any leftover morning mist and giving them dramatically clearer visibility, especially where Misuzu had blown away a portion of the island's cover.

  We've been spotted. Hardly a few seconds had passed before Misuzu's warning echoed through their heads. Watchtower.

  “Well,” said Jaryn, “no use being coy. Let's go say hello.”

  They progressed forward at a normal speed, approaching the towering island with caution. It was a surprise when dragons came up from above, one on each side, to flank them. Soon, other dragons joined in on the escort, some with riders on their back, some without. They didn't appear to be of any great threat until Misuzu drifted too close to the one on her right. The dragon was smaller than her, with mottled green and yellow scales, but he snapped at her. Misuzu opened her maw in a growl of warning, but it only seemed to agitate the others. They closed rank around her as they passed the wall of mist surrounding the island, out into the clearer air above it, nipping at her long tail and short legs, directing her flight by limiting her mobility. In her anger, blackened clouds began to form around her, pregnant with flashing lightning. One of the dragons nipped at her neck, close to where Jaryn and the others sat in fear and confusion. A bolt of white light sizzled through the air, making contact with the dragon.

  Suddenly there was music in the air. The breathy, hollow tune seemed to surround them, rendering Cailin all but motionless once again. Whatever the song was supposed to have done, it sent all of the surrounding dragons scattering to leave Misuzu alone in the air.

  Jaryn, I have a bad feeling about this.

  “No more than me,” he confessed. “We must land or I fear we'll face a battle we will not win.”

  I'm not shifting.

  “Good.” He reached behind, glancing at Cailin to see her face pale and her lids half closed. “Cailin, we're going to land.”

  She nodded weakly. “It was different this time, Jaryn.”

  “She tried to jump off,” Connor reported, his voice tremulous. “I had to hold her on.”

  “It was calling to
me.”

  “Alright,” Jaryn soothed. “It's all right now. Just stay calm and follow my lead.” Gripping Misuzu's mane, he nodded. “Let's go.”

  There was a gathering crowd awaiting them below. Misuzu flew high over the entirety of the island to make sure all of them could get a good look at it all. She circled the middle where she intended to land once, making sure everyone was out of the way before slithering downward and landing gracefully. The dragons had all returned to their mountains, seemingly giving no care as to who these strangers may be. The humans on the island were another story entirely. They kept a careful distance but surrounded the group, leaving them no chance of escape but directly up. Given what they'd seen of the dragons, however, even going up was a far cry from a viable option.

  In front of them, the crowd parted and a woman passed through. She was wrapped in leather and furs to keep away the cold, but what skin could be seen was a lighter shade of brown. Her bare hands were covered in tattoos and another of intricate design looked to be crawling out from under her tunic and up the left side of her neck. The sides of her head were shaved, leaving nothing to disguise the tell-tale point to the tips of her ears. What hair was left on her head formed a spiked mohawk that stood green at the front, then faded to yellow, orange, and finally red near the base of her skull. Dark brown eyes took in the dragon before her, a certain hunger in her gaze. When she finally looked to the three still waiting, she appeared less than impressed.

  “Dismount.”

  Jaryn slid down first, then Connor. Both of them reached up to help Cailin down. She looked to be getting her strength back, but she was as wary of these strangers as the others were. “We mean no harm,” Jaryn promised, turning to the woman he assumed was in charge. Surprised to find her a little taller than him, he offered her a pleasant smile. “Sorry if we startled anyone.”

  The woman looked him over before sliding her assessing gaze to the other two. When she returned her attention to Jaryn, she hardly glanced at him before looking directly over his shoulder and giving a quick, sharp nod. People from behind surged forward to take the three unawares and pin them on the ground, their hands wrenched cruelly behind their backs. Though all three of them protested, they were each given a pat down and searched. Misuzu started to move, surely preparing to defend her friends, but Cailin cried out to her with her thoughts, telling her to be still for the time being.