Chapter 31

“Get up already!” Brontus growled, firmly planting a foot in my side.

I grunted, immediately clutching my gut the instant his foot pulled back. An abrupt awakening was bad enough but being cut off in the middle of Rose speaking was worse. She was trying to tell me something, I knew that. It took a second for me to remember what, the dream being a bit fuzzy but the details always returned when I focused.

“Come on, we have most of the day of travel,” Brontus urged, nodding in the direction of the sun. Over the trees, the mountains rose, scrapping the sky. I had been able to see them earlier, if I squinted, but a day of riding had brought them much closer. “We should arrive at the base by sundown if we get a move on!” our mission leader continued as he rolled up his bedroll and strapped it to the saddle. “This way,” he directed as the three of us scrambled to clean up and follow.

He guided his horse to a pond and let it drink, and soon enough all of our rides were filling up on water. “These horses can go for the whole day on a single belly full of food and water, and I fed them before you woke up. We’re not stopping until we arrive so I hope that you can get comfortable.”

I grimaced at the thought of riding all day, or rather of getting off afterwards, my legs still sore from the half day of riding before.

“Here.” He handed me a bag. “Rations for today. Don’t eat it all at once.” I looked inside and there were two more buns and strips of dried meat. It wasn’t the tastiest but I tore off a third of a bun and stuffed it in my mouth as I faced my horse. Her chestnut brown flank was just as tall as it was the day before, and I didn’t feel up to trying the floating magic again. After tying the pouch of food to my belt, I took a breath, and climbed. I of course had a running step, but the mount was cleaner than it had been the day before, even if it still took nearly a moment for me to be fully and properly situated.

Finally sitting down, I saw Brontus already trotting a few lengths ahead. “Go,” I told my horse, and she seemed to understand, or at least recognize who the true leader was, picking up pace as Brontus and the others did so, transitioning to a gallop. Ahead, the Eastern Mountains loomed, getting closer and closer as we travelled throughout the day.

In the distance, at one point, to our left, I thought I could see some buildings, a steeple standing out prominently behind the few trees that separated us from civilization. “Hmm… the peach tarts,” Sarah whimpered beside me, pouting a bit as we kept riding during a slow moment. I figured that must have been the city of Northcrest she lamented passing by, but if Brontus heard her, he said nothing.

We didn’t slow, continuing with another gallop for an hour. It was intermittent: gallop, trot, gallop, trot, giving the horses a time to relax at a slower pace. My gaze was fixed ahead as I occasionally ate from the bag of food, pacing myself in our slower moments. The mountains only got bigger as we raced the sun to get to our horizon first.

And in the middle of my view of the mountains was Brontus. I stared at the man’s back as he rode ahead of us, giving the horses a break as we trotted, still moving but a relief from the off and on gallop throughout the day. I noticed before that Sarah shared the same general look of annoyance at Brontus that I did, though it was possibly specifically due to how many times he had called her out for one thing or another. Christopher, however, didn’t share that expression with us. From what I understood though, he had grown up at the training compound to the east, so I wasn’t sure if he had ever met the man before.

“He actually visited our training compound a couple times,” Christopher told me after I guided my horse beside his and asked him. “Was nicknamed ‘The Bone Mage’.”

“Because he controls bones?” I asked, my voice dry as I rolled my eyes at the nickname.

“Actually, because he would heal any broken ones,” Christopher corrected. “He’s an ass, no doubt about that, but he’s not halfhearted. I have a lot of respect for him.”

Heals broken bones? I thought about what had happened in the cell the first time I saw my father. I knew I had heard something, multiple things most likely, crack. And yet I was fine the next day. …Did he actually—

“Hey hey!” Sarah chimed in, bumping her horse into mine as she joined our little stroll. “Whatcha whispering about?”

I didn’t know what to tell her. “Uh…”

“Dragons,” Christopher quickly covered. Apparently he too didn’t want to include her in the conversation.

“Oh! Those are so cool! I’ve never seen an adult dragon up close, only a few baby ones. They were sooooo cute, I just wanted to hug them! But they were burrowing dragons, so they already had their really long claws. The only downside was how frequently they came around but I had my parents take me to every single one.” She kept going, talking about the babies as if that’s all we were going to see.

I was a bit shocked, no one that I knew had ever seen a dragon, only drawings and stories, and the sorts of travellers that had a dragon, other than the near unheard of dragon rider or tamer, were circuses that would have halved my father’s life savings to take the three of us. “Sarah… were you rich rich?” I asked, the scale of a noble slowly coming into focus as she talked about a life changing amount of money like it was a common fee.

“I told you,” she smirked, “I was friends with the royal family.”

“Ah, right, right.” I nodded, recalling her little show off with Lucian. “Uh, Prince Andrew… and Alexander…” I tried to remember the names. Despite their authority and power, the royals had never been a topic of interest in my hometown.

“What? No, there’s no ‘Prince Alexander’,” she corrected. “Just Prince Curtis, Andrew,” she made an exaggerated ‘bleh’ noise, sticking a finger in her mouth right after his name, “and Franky.”

“Prince Franklin,” Christopher corrected her.

“Well, he said I could call him ‘Franky’.”

“What, when you were seven?” Christopher raised an eyebrow, mildly incredulous.

“Yes, actually.”

I partially tuned their batter out, even if I was physically in the middle of it. I could have sworn I had heard of ‘Prince Alexander’, though I failed to recall where.

“I even say a storm dragon once, as well as a few kite dragons, of course. Never a fire dragon; apparently those are ‘too dangerous’, even as babies.” Sarah made big elaborate air quotes, thumbs hooked on the reins, as she mocked whoever had denied her in the past. “Hey Brontus!” she called ahead, getting the attention of our guide. “What kind of dragon are we looking for?”

“Kite,” he called back. “We speculated it was a fire dragon, but a recent report said it was green. It’s important though that we confirm which it is.” It took a second but I remembered what Scolffice had taught us: fire dragons are red, burrowing dragons are tan to dark brown, and kite dragons are green, as well as larger than the other two with massive wings. “That’s a long enough break, time to gallop.” He snapped the reins and his horse neighed, surging ahead. Sarah and Christopher followed with ease and I was just a second behind them, my crash course over these two days teaching me by experience.

Another two hours and we were at the foot of the mountain, or at least around the base. Unlike what the steep rocky peaks may have implied, the bottom third of the mountain was buried in dirt and forest, sloping gradually from near flatness to a steady uphill hike. Brontus actually smiled as he got off his horse, though I wasn’t sure if it was just a trick of the dwindling light, as it was gone when I looked again. Without a word he began to set up camp and the three of us followed suit.

“Tomorrow,” he finally spoke once the fire was lit, “we’ll look around. We haven’t seen the dragon yet which means it may be hibernating, so we’ll have to be careful looking for it in the surrounding caves.”

“Is that the only reason we wouldn’t see it?” Christopher asked.

“Could be dead,” I grumbled.

“Or nesting,” Sarah chimed in.

“Nesting?” I asked.

“Well, you see,” she began with a smirk, “when a mommy dragon and a daddy dragon love each other very much—”

“There should only be a single dragon,” Brontus cut in. “They’re territorial creatures, so it’s highly unlikely two would be in the same area. We just need to verify its type.”

I vaguely recalled something that had been taught to us in the past week. “I thought that dragons were native to the Eastern Mountains?”

Brontus nodded. “Native, yes, when we put up with them. Now we don’t, which is why this little census is so vital.”

I nodded, the explanation good enough for me. I didn’t say anything though as I dug into the last bit of bread and meat from my bag, draining my waterskin alongside it. Within a half hour we let the fire die and each turned in to sleep, mentally preparing to search for a dragon.