Chapter 1 #2
They descended toward a collection of oddly placed rocks. As they flew closer, she could see that the boulders seemed to be placed in a purposeful arrangement, unlike natural scree from decades of shifting mountain debris.
“Is that the remains of an old nest?” she wondered.
A shimmer appeared in the chilly air that came from nothing.
A reflection of light fractured before them, rippling out like rings in still water.
A warmth passed over her as they flew through whatever it was.
The magic’s trace pulled at her body like an invisible web.
Immediately to either side, a dragon-sized archway appeared past the tips of White Eye’s outstretched wings.
“Wards?” Lark asked, her pulse skipping a beat. “But how?” She realized they could’ve been seriously maimed or injured had they not been granted access to enter.
A stone sanctuary appeared before them, the remains of a forgotten village sprawling around it.
Carvings of runes dotted the stones, each ancient marking pristine despite the weathering of centuries of wind, rain and snow.
Lark had no memory of a settlement or sanctuary located in these mountains.
Building here was forbidden. This was a nesting ground of the original twelve dragons.
These grounds were to be respected and left undisturbed, regardless of which kingdom riders hailed from.
A sense of discomfort coiled within her.
The sensation increased, spreading out across her chest from the transmissions through her necklace via her bond with Nix.
As they flew low beyond the arch, more buildings came into view.
They painted themselves into existence as the wards washed away the illusion that had kept them hidden.
Upon closer inspection, Lark recognized the style of stone masonry featured in the towering perches, broad buildings, and expansive courtyards.
Runes were carved and embossed into every oaken door and granite walkway.
Each rune remained swollen with magical energy.
A magic that kept this town thawed, as though it was eternally transitioning from Spring to Summer.
No snow piled up on the ancient roofs of the buildings below, allowing Lark a clear look at the architecture. She knew its influence immediately.
This is a dragonrider sanctuary!
Only, time had weathered this place more than the others Lark had learned about in her upbringing as a young Northern princess, then as a fully dedicated dragonrider.
Many of the buildings had been abandoned for what must’ve been decades or more.
Everywhere she looked, roofs were collapsing and walls were caving in.
Vegetation crept over most low-lying surfaces.
No outside threat had tested the wards as they’d been going without resupply for as long as history had concealed it.
Despite the magic used to power the wards that kept this place hidden, it was in ruin.
The magic had not worked on the inside of the sanctuary.
There were no signs of caretakers, or life in the town.
With consideration for Lark’s healing injuries, White Eye landed with uncharacteristic gentleness in an expansive courtyard.
A cliff jutted up the mountainside to form the northern boundary of the sanctuary town.
From this cliff wall, the town spread out in an oval, leading to the massive stone archway they’d flow through on the southern end.
As Lark slid from the saddle, supporting her arm, she noticed her dragon’s attention wasn’t on the sanctuary.
His gaze, those milk white eyes rimmed in gold, were fixated on a split that had formed in the cliff wall, yawning into a massive dark chasm.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose, keying into whatever White Eye was sensing.
Lark realized they weren’t completely alone here.
She checked to either side, peering into the abandoned buildings.
She searched the windows that had been broken open and grown over and through with vines.
She noted rotting wooden doors listing off their hinges, moss-capped walls, and streets lined with grass-covered paving stones.
“I can’t believe this place is here. It’s not on any maps I’ve ever seen. Why haven’t any of our instructors ever told us about this sanctuary?” she said.
Her attention shifted back to White Eye, but his gaze was solely focused on the opening in the cliff. The dark fissure that opened into the mountainside.
“How did you know this was here?” she asked him.
A ripple tremored through his neck as he pointed his snout to the opening.
“Whatever you need to show me had better be worth all this delay,” Lark said.
Something that Barrik had taught her during her training surfaced then. “When a dragon’s urgency outweighs a rider’s demands, look deeper. Some dragon’s minds share a connection with their ancestor’s memories. They can glimpse into the past and remember what our histories have forgotten.”
“What could be important enough for you to ignore my longing to return to Venrick and the others?” Lark asked stepping closer to the fissure.
That’s when she noticed it. A crystalized layer of frost covered the sides of the vertical crevasse.
Lark blinked, cursing her fatigued mind for overlooking it as normal frost. Frost in the North wasn’t an unusual thing to see.
But here, in a sanctuary where spells stored in runes kept everything melted to create eternal springtime, something frozen was an oddity.
Slowly, White Eye overtook her, and she followed.
Lark’s boots crunched on frost-covered stone as White Eye neared the opening.
He used his tail to sweep away rocky debris, clearing her path.
Though frustration toward him for bringing her here against her will was her prime emotion at present, her curiosity about the frost’s origins had been piqued.
“I don’t think this crack in the earth is a natural phenomenon,” she said, stepping through the threshold with a scrupulous eye. “The edges of it are too angular and symmetrical, like it was cut out of the rock. It’s not a weathered opening.”
Tucked inside the frost-rimmed opening, at the edges where daylight bled into the shadows, Lark saw markings had been carved into the cliff walls.
What is that? Lark reached out with her uninjured arm, tracing the carving. “It’s a dragon wing,” she realized.
Within the wing a line of script had been carved in the old dragonrider’s language, the runes from the first dragonriders. Further along the wall, she saw more carvings that faded into the darkness within.
“It’s been so long since I practiced reading the old rider’s script,” she said, remembering when her grandfather, the King of Skol, had forced her to learn the language.
The pendant on her necklace flared with an uncomfortable heat. Lark instinctively searched the air near her, hoping to see the pinwheel of sparks that preceded Nix’s arrival. As the seconds grew longer, Nix remained hidden from sight.
Why won’t you show yourself? Lark thought, trying to project her need for her friend’s support back into the pendant. That’s when a sense of calm passed through her, stemming from her dragon bond.
Lark turned her attention back to the runes carved by riders from centuries past. Mixed in among them, she began to see more and more characters that she didn’t recognize.
“There are symbols in this writing that aren’t from any language I’ve ever seen before. This isn’t magi, elfish, orcish, or dwarfish, nor does it contain any letters from an alphabet of human origin.”
White Eye grumbled. The sound reverberated through the cavernous opening as Lark was compelled to delve deeper. His influence over her nearly overpowered Lark, and she had to restrain herself from sprinting down into the darkness.
I’d forgotten how influential your will can be when my guard is down, she thought toward him.
Cautiously, Lark ventured deeper into the cavern. A strange mixture of feelings tugged at either side of her consciousness. The warning Nix sent by refusing to emerge though Lark had called on her in a moment of need, told her to turn back.
But because Lark trusted White Eye, she continued to follow him while also studying the strange mixture of languages.
The dragonrider runes were so interconnected with the shapes of this unfamiliar language that they seemed to be used almost as one new language, creating a message she could only partially decode.
Lark recalled a lesson from her rider training. Barrik had been answering her questions about the use of magical languages.
“When spoken together, can two dialects make a spell more powerful? If I were to cast a spell using elvish and magi, would it be stronger than had I coaxed the power from a Yogo Sapphire using only one language?” she’d asked.
“Of all the magical languages in Sataran, the intention of the words crafted behind a spell are what cause the power from a Yogo or Hyalite to take form. They are not defined by the words or by the language. That is not the case for power used through other bonds,” Barrik explained.
“A draconic bond, for example, can give a rider access to wield power without speaking at all.”
Lark paused, seeing it here, two languages that were clearly mixing with each other in the carvings.
There seemed to be no pattern to the mix.
Some of the verses were carved entirely in the dragonrider’s original language, some completely in these new runes she couldn’t identify.
In other lines, the two styles were so tangled that some phrases and symbols overlapped.
“This doesn’t make sense,” she said, pressing her palm flat against the stone.
“If these runes have been created for magical use,” she reasoned. “And the languages to pull power out of a Yogo to infuse the runes are truly shaped by the intention of the writing, why would whoever created these need to write in a mixture of two languages?”
“The only explanation I can come up with is whoever wrote these messages was using more than one system of magic. But everything I was taught, everything I’ve remembered, says the dragonriders have never shared our unique source of power with another magical race.
Dragons bond with a rider so they can wield the powers of a god, much stronger than the magic they can wield inherently. Why would these runes be merged here?”
A sudden gust of wind howled through the ruins, carrying with it an ice-cold musk, sharp and undeniable. It triggered a shockwave of remembrance.
That smell. Lark recognized it instantly. The frost clinging to the rocks in a place where no other snow or ice was present now made perfect sense. Only one kind of shade brought that icy edge with it everywhere it spread its corruption. Rimeshade.
Lark twisted to face the wind entering the cavern, nearly losing her balance as her side and arm flared with pain.
White Eye steadied her with his snout, his attention remaining fixed on the opening to the courtyard beyond.
The daylight revealed no chilling creature cloaked in an inkwell of smoke.
She looked out at the empty sanctuary, silent and devoid of life.
“Okay, White Eye. Show me why you brought us here,” she said, finally surrendering to her dragon’s insistence. “Show me what’s so important that we’re leaving Venrick and the others to whatever fate found them.”