Chapter 46 Kailin
KAILIN
"Bravery is a decision, a skill, not a quality you are born with, but it is a necessity for a rider."
—Commander Ravel
"Open your eyes, Little Warrior." Ravel's voice was soft in my ear, his arms secure around me. "I won't let you fall.”
The wind roared past us, carrying freezing air that bit at my cheeks and numbed the tip of my nose. Beneath me, I could feel the dragon's massive body, muscles rippling, wings beating with terrifying power, and behind me, Ravel's solid presence was like a safety net.
Still, I wasn't about to follow his command.
Saying the words out loud was not an option, given the strong wind that would have swallowed the sound, but I managed to move my head a fraction to indicate that I wasn't about to do as he suggested.
I had a feeling that if I opened my mouth, all that would come out of it would be a pitiful whimper.
"Come on, Kailin. Conquer your fear," Ravel persisted, his breath warming my earlobe and managing to defrost it a little. “You are going to regret missing out on your first dragon-eye view."
I should have worn a hat.
Why hadn't I thought of that?
I had been too stunned by Ravel's appearance and his offer to give me a ride to think straight. That connection that I'd felt five years ago was still present, but it was as if its hooks couldn't find purchase and were sliding off on both ends.
What was it that I was actually feeling toward him?
Commander Ravel was an attractive man, very much so, and I had eyes.
It was impossible not to notice all those rippling muscles, and not to respond to that aura of authority and confidence that he wielded with such ease.
Despite having feelings for Alar, I couldn't ignore the stirrings of desire Ravel ignited, and I felt a little guilty about the attraction even though I wasn't going to act on it.
The truth was that the connection wasn't strictly physical. It was something else that I couldn't define.
I had to find out why I was so drawn to him.
What could pull me to Ravel with such a force if it wasn't infatuation?
Disturbed by my strange response to the commander, I did the unthinkable and opened my eyes to distract myself.
That was a big mistake, and I immediately regretted it.
The Circle of Fate was already far below us, the massive standing stones reduced to tiny dots in a ring of light. My stomach lurched, and I clamped my lips and eyes shut simultaneously to stop myself from throwing up on Obsidian's neck.
"Come now," Ravel said in my ear. "After facing down Shedun at sixteen, this is nothing.
You know better than most that bravery is a decision, a skill, not something you are born with.
It's a necessity for a rider, and I know you can summon it because you've done it before.
" When I still kept my eyes shut, he leaned closer again.
"If you can't do this, perhaps I should turn back. "
Despite the panic flooding my veins, irritation flared at his mocking tone. "How do you even know that my eyes are closed? I just had them open a moment ago."
He chuckled. "Your body telegraphs what you're feeling, and I can easily detect the flares of panic.
Now, what will it be? Do we fly forward to the Citadel and you start your training, or do I take you back to the circle so you can go down the mountain with all the other pilgrims who are not destined to ride dragons? "
I'd never backed down from a challenge, and his goading struck a nerve.
"The Citadel." Taking a deep breath, I forced both eyes open.
The world spread out before me in a panorama of breathtaking beauty. From a dragon's back, the auroras were more than a visual spectacle. The space we were flying through seemed to vibrate with the shifting colors.
The obsidian dragon—I still didn't know his name—banked into a turn, and I caught my first glimpse of what lay ahead.
"That's the Citadel," Ravel said, his arm tightening around my waist as he pointed toward a massive structure embedded in the side of the mountain.
The Dragon Force stronghold was nothing like I'd imagined.
From this distance, it appeared to be a natural extension of the mountain itself, and as we drew closer, I could see terraces jutting out from the sheer cliff face at various levels.
I assumed they were meant as landing pads, but I had to wonder how those protrusions could hold the great weight of the dragons.
Above the Citadel was the aviary, with large archways that were carved directly into the mountain, creating what looked like hundreds of cave-like openings with similar floating ledges in front of them.
My fear was momentarily forgotten in the face of such astonishing architecture. "How was this built?" I asked.
"You can present your question to your instructors tomorrow at orientation, but I suspect they'll tell you what every cadet is told—Elucian ingenuity, dragon strength, and Elu's blessing. The Citadel and the aviary above it are supposedly ancient, built when Elu still walked among us."
The obsidian dragon let out a rumble that vibrated through my body.
"Onyx disagrees with the official explanation," Ravel said. "He says that it's an ancient place that existed before Elucia was even a dream in Elu's mind, but since Elu created all of Aurorys, that's just dragon boasting. They think that they are the masters of the universe."
The dragon released a chuff that smelled of sulfur and sounded a lot like a chuckle.
"Is Onyx his name?" I asked. "Or is it a nickname?"
"It's my nickname." A voice thundered in my head. "My true name is too difficult for humans to pronounce, as most dragon names are."
My breath caught.
"Onyx has just spoken to me in my head." I turned to look at Ravel over my shoulder. "How is that possible? I'm not even a rider yet, and even if I were, dragons are supposed to communicate only with their own riders. Not all of them."
Ravel seemed just as surprised as I was, and for a long moment, he didn't respond.
"That's correct," he finally said. "You heard Nyxath's call because the brew made your mind receptive, but you shouldn't be able to hear Onyx or any other dragon in your head until you are chosen by the one you will bond with.
" He chuckled softly in my ear, his breath fanning over it.
"I knew there was something special about you. "
That couldn't be.
I was not special, not unless being the only Elucian who feared heights qualified me as such.
"I'm surprised as well, Little Warrior," Onyx said. "Although not as much as Ravel. I sensed you were different when we first met five years ago."
I still remembered that encounter vividly, but whatever communication had passed between us then, it hadn't been verbal. I'd sensed Onyx's wish for me to look at Ravel.
“Were you trying to match us?” I surprised myself by asking the dragon such a direct question, but then there was no point in trying to hide my thoughts from him when he could read my mind.
"Dragons do not play matchmakers," he said. "I just wanted to see if Ravel got the same impression of you as I had. He was impressed by your warrior spirit, and he felt a connection, but we both interpreted it as an affinity for a future rider. We knew you would be chosen."
I wondered if dragons adhered to the Precepts of Truth, and whether what Onyx was saying was factual or an attempt to flatter me. He didn't comment, because he either didn't hear my thoughts or chose to ignore them.
As we got closer to the Citadel, I could see that what had appeared a natural part of the mountain from a distance was indeed a feat of extraordinary engineering. Massive stones had been shaped and fitted together so precisely that they seemed to have been melted together.
How had the ancient Elucians managed to build something so enormous at this elevation?
The dragons had probably brought up the building materials, but even that couldn't explain the scale of what I was seeing. The Citadel was almost as impressive as Elucia's port of entry, but the two hadn't been built at the same time, nor by the same builders.
"Not the same builders, but the same technology," Onyx's voice sounded again in my head.
It was unnerving that he was reading my thoughts and choosing which of my questions he wished to answer and which he preferred to ignore. I needed to learn to block him somehow.
"Will they teach us about this technology in the academy?" I asked Ravel, wondering if he was privy to my conversations with Onyx.
"No. It's a tightly held secret," Ravel said.
"From time before time," Onyx added. "When the currents could fly freely between worlds."
“What does time before time even mean? And what worlds?”
I got no answer for that from the dragon, but then Ravel shifted behind me, reminding me that certain parts of him were pressed against certain parts of mine, which was making me extremely uncomfortable.
"Onyx has a flair for the dramatic," he said in my ear. "Dragons' myths are recited in songs, and they are more poetry than factual history."
Onyx released another indignant puff. "At least our history doesn't get lost like yours. Parchment and paper decay. Songs endure."
Now I knew for sure that Onyx was full of it. He, as well as all the other dragons, had been hatched after the Second Extinction War, making the oldest among them only a little over a thousand years old. They didn't possess any lost knowledge unless it was encoded in their genes.
As a general comment, though, he was right.
Legends claimed that Elu had scribes recording important events, and that later the head shamans had continued the tradition, but those records had supposedly been destroyed during the First Extinction War, when Elu's temple had fallen into ruin.
If we had those stories committed to memory instead of being written down, the survivors could have told them to their children, and the information would have been passed on.