Chapter 15 Kailin
KAILIN
"Between earth and sky, a rider learns that survival depends on knowing when to yield and when to resist."
—Commander Moira Langston,
Storm Wing, Dragon Force
The afternoon air bit sharply against my face as I crossed the landing platform toward Onyx.
I was tired despite Captain Odinah going easy on me during conditioning, and it wasn't Alar's fault, well, other than keeping me awake at night.
On top of not getting adequate sleep, I'd also spent hours inhabiting the bodies of nocturnal hunters.
I'd been an owl scanning the mountainside for prey, a mountain cat stalking through the darkness, even briefly inhabiting the mind of a bat navigating by sound alone.
That had been an interesting experience that I was not going to forget anytime soon.
Thankfully, I'd had no trouble shifting my consciousness back into my own body, but I'd given Alar a bit of a scare when I hadn't woken up when he'd tried to rouse me.
"Good afternoon, Little Warrior," Onyx greeted me, his mental voice warm with affection. "You look exhausted. Is it still because of the Podana dream?"
"I guess. I also drank the tea last night and had more dreams. They are not conducive to a peaceful, restorative sleep. But at least nothing urgent came through. No attacks to warn about."
"Hello, Cadet Strom," Ravel greeted me. "How does it feel to be back?"
"Wonderful, sir. I feel safe here."
He regarded me with his dark, penetrating eyes, but said nothing, only motioned for me to get on.
"May I?" I asked Onyx.
"You may," he replied.
I climbed up and secured myself to the saddle.
"We will be working on evasive maneuvers today." Commander Ravel handed me the goggles. "The kind that might save your life when someone tries to shoot you out of the sky."
My stomach clenched. "I hope you don't expect it to happen here."
After the assassination attempt, I would not be surprised if someone tried to take me out that way.
"Every rider needs to know how to execute evasive maneuvers," he said matter-of-factly. "The Shedun have projectile weapons, and a rider who can't evade is a dead rider."
I swallowed.
Onyx launched with a powerful thrust of his legs, and my stomach dropped as we shot skyward. No matter how many times I flew, those initial moments always triggered my old fear of heights.
"The first rule of evasion is unpredictability," Ravel said. "If your enemy can predict your path, you're already dead."
I nodded, concentrating on squashing my fear.
"The second rule," he continued as we climbed, "is to trust your dragon. In an emergency, there's no time for discussion. You give the command, and you commit to whatever follows."
"What kind of command?" I asked, having to raise my voice over the wind.
Instead of answering, Ravel said, "Onyx, demonstrate evasive maneuvers."
The world turned upside down.
One moment we were climbing steadily, the next Onyx had flipped into a barrel roll that left my stomach somewhere back near the mountain peak. I bit back a scream, clinging to the grips as we spun through the air. The horizon became a whirling kaleidoscope of mountain and sky.
Then, just as suddenly, we leveled out.
"That's an evasive roll," Ravel said calmly, as if we hadn't just defied every known law of physics. "Effective against projectiles coming from the side. The spin throws off their trajectory."
I tried to catch my breath, my knuckles white around the grips. "A little warning would have been nice."
"Enemies and assassins don't give warnings." He said. "As you've recently learned."
The reminder chilled me.
"Next one," Ravel said. "The dive-and-climb maneuver."
This time I was ready—or thought I was. Onyx tucked his wings and plummeted toward the ground far below.
The wind screamed past us, tearing at my hair and clothes.
My stomach lodged itself in my throat as the rocky mountainside rushed up to meet us.
Every instinct screamed at me to demand we pull up, but I forced myself to keep my mouth shut and trust Onyx.
He knew what he was doing, and he wasn't going to let Ravel kill us all.
At what seemed like the last possible second, Onyx spread his wings wide, and the force of the deceleration pressed me hard against the harness as we pulled out of the dive and shot upward at an angle that should have been impossible.
"Good girl," Ravel said. "You didn't scream. Most first-years do."
"I was too terrified to scream," I admitted.
Onyx's mental chuckle rumbled through my mind. "You did well, Little Warrior. Many riders lose their breakfast on their first dive-and-climb."
"The day's not over yet," I muttered.
We spent the next hour practicing various evasive maneuvers. Each one seemed designed to test the limits of physics, my courage, and my ability to keep the contents of my lunch inside my stomach and not all over Onyx's neck.
The serpentine weave would make us a harder target for ground-based weapons. The sudden altitude drops would confuse our enemies. The wingover reversal would completely change our direction in seconds.
By the time Ravel called for a break, I was ready to call it a day, but we weren't done yet. Onyx landed on one of the smaller peaks, but we didn't dismount. The break was more for him than it was for us.
"You're improving," Ravel said, and from him, that was high praise. "You're conquering your fear of heights quite admirably."
"I'm learning to compartmentalize it," I admitted. "Though I suspect I'll never love flying the way other riders do."
"Love isn't necessary. Competence is."
"That's good to know."
"Did you dream last night?" Ravel asked. Evidently, he hadn't been privy to my mental conversation with Onyx at the start of our lesson.
"That's another thing I don't love, but am getting more competent at doing. Last night, I connected with half a dozen different creatures, and even a bat, which was an interesting experience. I still managed to wake up as me this morning."
"Perhaps you should give yourself a few more nights off. You still look like you've been run over by a dragon instead of riding one."
I chuckled. "Are you always so suave with the ladies?"
The moment the words left my mouth, I wanted to take them back, but it was too late. That was no way to speak to a commanding officer. Ravel was not my friend despite dining at my grandmother's table and saving me from assassins.
He shifted behind me. "You are not a lady, Kailin. You are a cadet, and we speak plainly to each other."
"I'm sorry. I was out of line, Commander. I would have gladly taken a few more days off, but Nyxath told me to drink the tea and dream. I don't think saying no to the dragon queen is an option."
Ravel was quiet for a moment. "She has her own agenda, and she might not be as concerned with your well-being as she is with the survival of her kind."
"Our fates are intertwined. If the dragons die out, Elucia falls, and without riders, dragonkind will not survive. We're bound together."
"There are different ideas about how to ensure that survival."
This was my opening. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something my friends discovered."
I felt him tense behind me. "Go on."
I took a breath, organizing my thoughts. "They were doing research in the library, reading through the journals of the fallen riders, and they found a concerning pattern."
"What kind?"
"Four dragons have had multiple riders die under suspicious circumstances.
Always from mistakes that experienced riders shouldn't make.
Improperly secured saddles, breaking formation to charge alone, that sort of thing.
Their names are Ixilthar, Syltharion, Morgateth, and Vyrassin.
I thought that I should mention it. Their current riders should be warned. "
"I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. Every death, either accidental or in battle, is thoroughly investigated by riders and ground crews."
I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder. "But the pattern…"
His expression hardened. "It's the rider's responsibility to check their equipment before every flight.
They are always the last ones to touch their harness before launching.
If the harness fails, it's on them. No one has access to it after they take off.
And besides, how do you imagine the dragons sabotaging the harness?
They don't have the physical capability to tamper with straps and buckles. "
Obviously, dragons couldn't do that themselves. They had talons, not fingers. They couldn't manipulate the small mechanisms of the riding gear. But they could influence the minds of humans to do their bidding.
"If the dragon's mind had been stronger than the rider's, they could have caused the rider to sabotage their own safety equipment."
I expected Onyx to interject and say that it wasn't possible for a dragon to compel a rider to do such a thing, but he remained suspiciously quiet.
Ravel didn't say anything either.
"Captain Odinah is bonded to Vyrassin," I said. "She might be in danger."
"Captain Odinah is aware of Vyrassin's past." His tone suggested that was all he would say on that subject.
Since he hadn't remarked on the unauthorized research my friends had conducted, I got emboldened.
"Would it be possible for us to get official permission to access the archives again?
" I asked. "They were able to go over just a few journals before Captain Odinah kicked them out.
Maybe the pattern will become clearer once we plot all the accidental riders' deaths over the past couple of centuries. "
Ravel was quiet for a long moment. Below us, clouds drifted past the peak, obscuring the ground far below. "First-year cadets aren't supposed to have access to the archives."
"You can say that you gave us a project that requires going over the journals of the fallen. What could be the harm in that?"
He sighed. "I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you, sir."
"Don't thank me yet." He gave Onyx the signal to take off. "Let's practice the spiral descent. It's useful for quick landings under fire."
The rest of the training session passed in a blur of vertigo-inducing maneuvers that challenged my ability to hold onto my lunch.
By the time we landed back on the platform, my legs were shaking, and my arms ached, but I was proud of successfully completing every exercise without freezing up, screaming at the top of my lungs, or emptying the contents of my stomach.
"Tomorrow, we'll practice the same maneuvers again," Ravel said as I dismounted.
"I wish I could say that I was looking forward to it," I said.
He smiled. "That's okay. In time, you actually will."
I sincerely doubted that.
Now that we were back on solid ground, or rather, the landing platform, and I wasn't holding on for dear life, I could use the opportunity to ask Onyx about the killer dragons. "Onyx, what do you know about those four dragons I told Ravel about?"
"They are not killers of riders. Each dragon is an individual, and each one has a different story."
"That sounds to me like an evasive answer."
He chuffed. "That's all you will hear from me. If you want to find out more, you'll need to talk to them directly."
I'd never tried to contact them, and I wasn't sure I knew how. So far, I'd only communicated with dragons who had addressed me first, except during the attack on Podana, when I'd communicated with any dragon who could hear me.
I didn't know how to single anyone out other than Onyx and Nyxath.
I could potentially reach Captain Odinah's dragon. Because I knew the rider, I could focus my mental call on Vyrassin.
The problem was that I wasn't skilled enough to ensure that no other dragon heard me unless I was alone with Vyrassin, and that wasn't easy to arrange.
"You are the one who warned us of Podana. You have earned the right to speak with any dragon who will listen." Onyx lowered his great head until his eye was level with mine. "But be careful. No dragon will harm you, but a human might."
With that, he and Ravel launched skyward, leaving me alone on the platform.
Onyx had avoided answering my questions, and I supposed that his loyalty to Nyxath or Ravel or both prevented him from disclosing the information I sought.
Saphir would know more, and he would be much more willing to share. The problem was getting a meeting with him. It wasn't as if I could climb to the top floor, knock on the door, and demand to see him.
There was a workaround, though. I could reach Nyxath telepathically and ask her to forward my request to Saphir. It was unconventional, but I couldn't think of another way that would be as effective.
Would I even be able to do so outside of a prophetic dream?
My ability to communicate telepathically with dragons was still new enough that I had to concentrate. It took a lot of effort to reach out with my mind, and I almost gave up when suddenly Nyxath blazed into my consciousness with the power of a sun.
"Your Majesty?" I said hesitantly.
"Just Nyxath," her mental voice was immediately recognizable. "What do you need, Kailin?"
I suddenly was terrified of her response to me bothering her with such a trivial thing. "I apologize for contacting you directly, but I need to speak with Saphir as soon as possible, and I don't know how to ask for a meeting. Could you please communicate my request to him?"
"Saphir and I share everything, and I am glad to forward your request. But why not simply go to him?"
"I can't go to the top floor without an invitation."
It suddenly occurred to me that I would be passing the top floor on my way down to my level, and if I were the daring type, I would use the opportunity to visit Saphir's office and ask his assistant to schedule a meeting for us.
But I was not supposed to leave the stairwell, and if any of the top brass saw me on the command level and asked me what I was doing there, I had no good answer.
She chuffed. "You are the Hero of Elucia. You don't need permission to go see Saphir."
"I was told not to expect any special privileges."
"I see. I'll inform Saphir of your request."
"Thank you."