Back on the west bank, Holt found himself face to face again with the Life Elder.
“Thank you for returning,” said the Elder. “May I?”
Holt nodded. Ash bowed. The Life Elder inspected their soul. He hummed in joy, and suddenly the blighted ground for a dozen feet was scrubbed clean. Flowers burst up from the bare soil and bloomed before their eyes. Holt could only imagine the quantity of magic the Elder had just used.
“It is as my Warden foretold!” The Elder’s happiness seemed an ill fit for his ancient voice, as though he had long since used it.
“Honored Elder,” Holt began, “what is it you see in us?”
“The purity of your bond is unlike any I have felt before. It is a strength I thought impossible.”
“I do not understand. Talia and Pyra are close, and their bond is more powerful, given their longer training. Those of Champion, Lord and Paragon rank have bonds surely greater than ours.”
“A mound of earth may be grown by adding more soil, but the rain will wash it away. Snowdrifts will gather flakes, but heat will melt it. Your bond is as solid as the base of a mountain.”
“Are not all bonds created in the same way?” Ash asked.
The Elder sniffed and ruffled his great wings. “As with all life, much may be similar, but nothing is exactly the same. Tell me of your first meeting.”
Holt took up the tale. As he described the knot of warmth in his soul forming on the night Ash hatched, the Elder interrupted.
“As early as that… yes… that would account for it. Neither wishing anything from the other except their presence.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Holt. “Talia and Pyra love each other just as much as Ash and I.”
“Perhaps, child. I have not felt their bond. Yet think again on their foundations. Since the time of the Pact, your Order presents candidates to dragons when both have already matured. I am sure some join the Order to defend loved ones, to give meaning to their lives, yet even such noble causes carry a desire; that the dragon they bond with will be able to grant them power, even if that is only to defend. Some seek the Order to atone for crimes or avoid bleak lives back home; the dragon is therefore their escape and they depend on the bond. There are more nefarious reasons besides. They want something from their partner. Such desires, great or small, sully a bond and besmirch one’s soul. Dragons also fall into the same temptations. Our greatest fault is the arrogance to believe we are better. A fault I am especially guilty of.”
“You speak harshly of yourself, Honored Elder,” Holt said.
“When you know why, you shall think me too lenient.”
“Well, I am pleased to hear my bond with Ash is pure, but I do not know what that means? I couldn’t save my own father. I – we – weren’t strong enough.”
“Love and strength are not one and the same, child. One day, you will realize why your bond is so exceptional. For my part, I never believed such a bond was possible. I did not trust in humans but you two have shown me how wrong I and my siblings have been. Even were your magic not exceptional, this one aspect would still give me more faith than a hundred Lords of your Order. You have given me hope that humans and dragons may share this world in harmony. As true friends.”
Ash ruffled his wings at that. “Honored Elder, I am so young, yet all I see in my echoing memories is the bond between us and riders. I sense no discord in those notes.”
The Life Elder’s eyes flashed, spinning through a wheel of green until settling on a somber shade of sage. “The magic of my sister locked much away. Such is the art of the mystics. My own power may be enough to reveal a portion to you, Ash. Few other than the eldest of our race now remember.
I do this in the hope you can understand the importance of the task I shall lay before you.”
A task? Holt thought in alarm. An Elder dragon requires our help in something?
Before Holt could think further on the matter, Ash began to squirm, then pine, then he growled and struggled against some invisible horror. As quickly as it started it ended, and Ash took a step back, panting like a dog.
“Elder…”
“Now you see,” said the Elder. “Share what you have learned with Holt. He must know as well.”
Holt braced himself. At least it would be over quickly.
“Ready?” Ash said. “Show me,” Holt said.
At once, their bond became taut, and flared from activity. Vivid images, dreamlike words, and the thoughts and feelings of all involved as though he’d developed a new sense altogether.
He was high as the clouds. A younger, brighter world rolled out before him. Music played, a perfect harmony beyond what crude instruments might perform. And then, a jarring sound arose. Those humans, which had for so long loped across the land, were growing in number.
The Elder’s voice carried over the foggy memories. “Long had the world been ours. We thought little of humans. And then they became troublesome. The one species capable of defying us. We fought over flocks and herd; trees from our tranquil glades were cut for fires; their sharp shiny new weapons cut our wings, their hammers crushed bone, their long wooden talons drove into scales. Rats had grown to lions and proved tenacious.”
Holt saw centuries of conflict flash before him, countless deaths on both sides. Villages burned; nests left with nothing but broken eggs, and all the while Holt heard the beautiful harmony descend into agonizing screeches – closer to the cries of the scourge than any song.
He clapped his hands over his ears, but it made no difference.
“One day my brothers and sisters gathered to discuss a solution.”
Five mighty dragons stood in a circle, roaring, gnashing, seething. One a wrathful lava red with scarlet eyes; the second so cold a blue it might have been crystalline, with eyes deep as the ocean; the third a metallic gray, its eyes shining like liquid silver; the fourth the yellow of a wheat field at
harvest with violet eyes; and the fifth, the fifth was the one dragon Holt recognized.
The Life Elder continued the story.
“Each of my brothers and sisters put forth their solution. The Fire Elder demanded their crops be burnt so they could not eat. The Frost Elder wished to freeze the rivers so they could not drink. The Storm Elder sought to drive them with wind beyond the deserts. It was the subtle thinking of the Mystic Elder that united us.”
All else in Holt’s vision dimmed as the great yellow dragon took prominence.
“She suggested another force might destroy the humans on our behalf. And it was I who was the first to agree with her. I, the Elder of Life, so sure these humans would sow discord in the world’s song, was the first to ascent to such a thing. I even suggested what form that force might take, knowing how susceptible your kind is to illness and despair.”
Before the Elders now appeared a flat altar of stone, on which appeared a number of skittering bugs.
“In the vethrax and their venom I sought the answer. The Fire Elder imbued his rage; the Frost Elder infused her cunning; the Storm Elder passed on his raw power; the Mystic Elder expanded their minds with arcane energies, and I bid them to grow. We did this hastily and in hate. The first of the scourge was born and by the time we realized the true extent of its dark power it was too late.’
Once again Holt soared on high like a dragon, observing a world now growing dark from rot.
“My punishment has been to fight the millennia long defeat. Unable to stop the plague I helped to create.”
The visions ceased. Holt felt the dragon bond shudder as Ash retracted the ancient memories of his people. He found he had dropped to his knees, his palms pressed against the grass. Breathing hard, he picked himself up.
The Life Elder cast his gaze to the ground. “You see now my great shame.”
Holt couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Dragons had created the scourge? The very beings who helped humanity fight against the bugs: dragons, proud and venerable, and—
But he knew better than most the pride of dragons. A lifetime of service had taught him that and if he had learned one thing in recent months, it was
just what the Life Elder had admitted. Even dragons could fall. Clesh fell. And the dragon Sovereign had fallen into a darkness perhaps worse than the Elders who had created the scourge in the first place.
At length, Holt found his voice. “So… if dragons hated humans, why did you join forces?”
“For years we did nothing. Until it seemed humanity would be wiped clean from the world, leaving an unstoppable horde of the dead which we could not hope to overcome. Dragons too fell to the scourge, through sickness and battle. The enemy of our enemy became our begrudging allies. We descended from our high nests to aid the humans in their desperate, failing attempt to push back the swarms. And in the heat of those early victories, the first bonds between our races formed.”
“That’s how the riders started?”
“Even as the advantages of such bonds emerged, such was the animosity between us that those who bonded became pariahs. Dragons suffered worse in this. And so, the Pact was made. Hostilities would cease, neither race would interfere with the other beyond the riders themselves.”
Shame wrinkled across Holt’s own dragon bond.
“This has nothing to do with you, Ash,” Holt said. He patted Ash down his long neck. A strange turn in fortune indeed, that dragons should create the bane of life and now another dragon arrived who could fight it.
Ash had weaknesses but fierce strengths as well. Kindness. Bravery. He was proof that other dragons worked hard to cover their frailties. Even the Life Elder had his flaws. He too let his heart lead him.
“I forgive you,” Holt said.
The Life Elder groaned and shook his great head as though he had misheard. “Did you not understand what—”
“I did. And I still forgive you, for what it’s worth.”
“It means a great deal to me.”
“More hatred won’t get us anywhere. There’s already one dragon putting out enough of that on his own. Do you know of Sovereign? You hired Rake to defend your flight from him after all.”
“We knew of a threat preying on the wild flights. Rake brought word that others were suffering from attacks. We did not know who or what was behind them. I thought it might have been a rogue member of your Order.”
“Well, it was to an extent. And perhaps there are others. But this dragon, Sovereign, he has control over the scourge. That’s why they are acting so
differently.”
“It cannot be controlled. We tried.”
Holt’s heart sank. He thought for sure that the Life Elder would know the answer; know how they could defeat Sovereign and the scourge.
“If you didn’t know of him, what is it you wanted from Ash and I? Why did you come to help us?”
“Because in the rider Brode’s song, I felt such a love for his dragon, even across decades since their parting, and her love for him. Enough to make me question all our old prejudices. That a distant descendant of my flight could feel so powerfully for this human made me reconsider the nature of the bonds that form between us and the chance for our future. News of your power stirred fresh hope in me too, one I had to see for myself. Your land was threatened, but no longer would I sit idle and let others make amends for my mistakes. For too long have things remained static. It is time to unite, rid the world of the scourge forever, or die in the attempt.”
“What would you have Ash and I do? As effective as Ash’s lunar magic is, we are but one young pair.”
“Seek my brothers and sisters. It might be our creation is too strong but if we gather the strength of all flights, there is a chance. We shall need their aid, especially if this Sovereign has been recruiting riders and dragons to his cause. The world is sick,” he added with a shudder. “The blight runs deep. A time of change is upon us all, and we shall either learn to bend to it or we shall break.”
Holt breathed hard. Where was he to begin?
“Honored Elder, the wild flights are known to be reclusive and secretive. Perhaps some of your flight should accompany us to—”
“That, I fear, would be unwise. The Fire Elder departed in fury, swearing never to have dealings beyond his flight again. The Frost Elder left, uncaring for the havoc we had wrought. The Storm Elder declared he would gather enough power to deal with the problem alone. And the Mystic Elder vanished quietly with her flight, for reasons known only to her. All blamed me for what we did. Yet if there is anything that can reunite us, I believe it to be you and Ash. I trust that when they feel the strength of your bond, they will realize their folly as I did.’
It was so much to take in. A long journey of which Holt could not make out the road, never mind the destination. There would doubtless be great
challenges, and it would help him and Ash grow strong.
Once more he heard his father’s final plea. Help the others…
Holt curled a fist. We must grow stronger.
This mission, as insurmountable as it seemed, would at least give them a clear goal to pursue.
“What if we fail?” he asked.
“Whether my brothers and sisters bring their might to bear, I, the Elder of Life, vow to aid in the fight ahead. Even unto death.”
Ash roared in agreement. “I accept this task, Honored Elder.”
“May the song of night grow loud and rich within you,” said the Life Elder.
“I too am ready,” said Holt. “Only we do not know where to begin.”
“There is time yet. Rest and recover in full. Seek me here when you may to talk further.”
Holt climbed onto Ash’s back, still unsure whether he had fully taken it all in. Perhaps it would settle better as he Cleansed and Forged.
“There is another rider in the city,” Holt said. “Her name is Talia. We would not be here without her help. May I tell her of all we have learned from you, Honored Elder?”
The Elder let out a great gust of breath through his great nostrils. “You may.”
“Thank you,” Holt said. Before starting the sense-sharing technique, he had one last question. Something he hoped would alleviate Talia’s concerns about what he knew he had to do.
“Honored Elder, Rake sought a favor from you. That’s why he agreed to escort your flight. He said he’d been asking you for a long time to help him. What did he want?”
“It is not my place to tell you. Rake’s burden is his alone to share.”
Holt nodded; he had expected as much. With that, he and Ash took off, heading for the palace isle. Their final farewell to Brode lay ahead, but given all they had heard, and the task before them, Holt knew it was their farewell to much more. His old life was over.
Yet neither would he become a dragon rider.
