Adner

Peaks Third Sun-Cycle

I snapped awake before the sun crested the mountain. I heard a chittering from below and I glanced down to discover Tankin staring up at me.

“Are we walking?” I asked him.

His form changed into a hunt-ling with brown feathers and enormous eyes. He made a hooting sound and took flight.

I surveyed the tree where my kin slept and found none had awakened. I followed him into the leaving-dark before sun-peek broke over the mountains. I felt dragon eyes on me and glanced at the red mountain. Winark stood watching me. He made no move to come with me or to stop me. He knew, as I did, I must go alone.

When we reached the valley, Tankin turned back into his true form. Unlike the dream, life was here, and it was busy with its routine and unworried by my presence. The herd beasts who Winark said were not for hunting milled about eating, drinking, and taking care of the few younglings. Not being hunted, they felt no need to keep their numbers up by breeding.

I followed my guide to the farthest mountains. Between two peaks, lay a path. It coiled around narrow corners, and trees stretched overhead. Under my paws were decades of dead leaves, and the smell of decay was pungent. A soft warm breeze flowed along the path, rustling the living leaves and the dead, dry ones under my paws.

We rounded one final corner, and sitting in a clearing was the large tree made of many. I could see evergreen, maple, oak, the tree that my kin slept in, and many others I had no name for. The sturdy branches stretched upward to the sky. Enormous roots lay over and under each other, covering the leaf-littered ground. As I watched, a breeze lifted the leaves, revealing a chasm below the tree. I assumed the roots reached solid ground, keeping the tree from falling. To this season cycle, I have my doubts.

The leaves were pulled to the ground as if a creature below breathed in. Then they rose once more. The rhythm was slow and steady. Every time the breeze was expelled, it swirled along the path, rustling the leaves there.

“It is the Breath of Life,” a voice said behind me. It was not male or female, and gave the impression of countless.

I turned to find the herd beast from my dream standing there.

“The Breath of Life?” I asked.

“Yes, this is the beginning. What your kind calls soul energy flows here when the host dies, and this is where life is reborn.”

“What are you?” I asked the entity before me, for he was no herd beast.

“I am the Guardian of this Life Tree and the valley beyond.”

“There are more?”

“Yes, four altogether. We have this one, and the others thrive in their own planes. Your breed should never lay eyes on them, but others of us think you will one day. Certain ones of us sense there will be a corruption which will spread. It will take all worlds without your help.”

“Others? A corruption?”

“Yes, Adner, but you are here for none of that. You are here to help your kind,” Oisin said.

“I want to understand.”

“I know, but no time is left. Your enemy is coming, and there is much to do prior to their arrival. I understand dragonkind wanting to leave this world, for no place exists for you to live in peace. The ones you call two-legged beasts fear you and covet what you have. They cannot possess what was bestowed on your kind by Nature. Only a select precious few were granted the gift of magic for a reason. The ones who have taken it from your kind will use it in ill ways. Dragons will pay the price for its misuse.”

“Is this what has kept me from fleeing with my clan?” I asked Oisin.

“Yes, Nature will not let you leave to have others die at their hands with the magic of your kin.”

“What do you mean, our kin?” I asked. My stomach sank, for I feared I knew.

“Your kin are inside the wands, alive and aware.”

I felt vomit rise in my throat, and I needed several long beats to find the calm I sought.

“What can we do? Every time we have fought the two-legged beasts, we have only lost more.”

“Nature has given your clan what it needs. The lake for the Water Dragons, the lava for the Fire Dragons, the tree on the bare mountaintop. Nature crafted these things for your clan. There are also wells waiting to hold the stolen magic. Others and I will be here to guard it until you need it again. We will guard the portal crafted for dragonkind to journey into the new world.”

I drifted into my own thoughts with the knowledge given to me. An ecosphere awaited us, and everything we found had been prepared for my clan.

“Did the colonists know? Is that why they directed us west?” I asked the being before me.

“Only Yara knew. She used to commune with Nature and learned the secrets of her heart,” Oisin told me.

“So, she gave her energy to the newling?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“She did with free will and with sacred gratitude. Yara had lived a long life, and she was ready to come home to us. Giving someone else a beginning was her greatest pleasure. We rejoiced at her arrival, and the glow from her energy lit the Life Tree so much the shine drifted into the valley. The young one that bears her name will carry her mark and kindness with her until she rejoins us. She will be a great leader to her hidden clan, and she will have many younglings who will carry on with the knowledge Yara bestowed upon her.”

“Will they be able to live hidden here with two-leggeds so close?”

“Yes, I will make sure of that. Go back to your clan now. Prepare them for who is approaching, and remember that you will not fight alone. The ones who will appear will frighten your kind, but if they are not two-legged beasts, they are there to help.”

Winark

I rushed to Adner when he returned from the Forbidden Valley. He appeared as if he was returning from a lengthy journey, but it had only been a few hundred beats. I was confident I knew where he was going when I glimpsed him earlier. I feared I was mistaken. He stared at me, glassy-eyed and confused.

“Adner, where have you been?” I asked him, concerned.

“I saw the one who said he was the Guardian,” he told me.

“It could not have been much of a conversation. You have not been gone even three hundred beats.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, startled into alertness. “I had to be gone over nine hundred beats, at least.”

“No, look at the sun.”

When he gazed up and saw that sun-peek had not passed, he was convinced.

“There is something odd about that location and him,” Adner said.

“What place?”

He looked at me for a moment.

“I cannot remember it well anymore. His words I do. They are as clear as if he were speaking them to me right now. We are going to have assistance with the two-legged beasts, and they will be here soon. Before we can leave, we must reclaim our stolen magic. The two-leggeds are not permitted to keep it. They will achieve horrible things with it, and our responsibility is to get it back. If we do not, we are accountable. Nature prepared this place for us. Oisin said we cannot leave before we get our enslaved back.”

I did not understand everything he said, but I understood we had much to arrange. We identified the direction they would come from, and we had to discover the best way to fortify the river. With the mountains on both sides, I believed an ambush before they arrived at the gorge was best. The gorge gave them an escape, and either direction exposed vulnerable targets. The colonists helped us even though they were two-legged and we were dragons. One had even given up her life. We could not leave them to what was coming.

“Come with me,” I told Adner, and I took him to the river.

I showed him where the river took a tight turn and then another one.

“We should strike here. It is a blind curve, so when the two-legged beasts come around it, they will not be able to see the larger dragons sitting on this side. The mountain will block their view. The smaller ones ought to be on the opposite side, but they should not engage until after my kin have attacked. With the river frozen ahead, we will freeze it from behind so they cannot retreat. They will have to go on foot.”

“The two-legged beasts will have our magic. They will be able to move the water and, if they have fire, melt the ice,” Adner reminded me.

“So, we forgo the freezing.”

“To start, the river should be frozen as they come around the corner. They will focus on that, and with fortune, you gain time for a surprise attack. And if fortune is with us, one of their floating vessels will get damaged,” Adner suggested.

I moved around the bend and searched the mountains.

“What are you searching for?” Adner asked me.

“Rocks, big ones. We need to stop their ability to retreat. Having several large rocks blocking the river should do it.”

We both searched and found a few.

“Get your kin to these, and as soon as the battle starts, have them send them down,” Adner told me.

I nodded.

“If we can cut their numbers, we could win,” I said.

“We must destroy what they call wands. Someone must break the wands open to free the ones inside,” Adner said.

“Very well. What if we use the Shadow Box?” I suggested.

Adner turned on me with anger in his eyes.

“We will not use them like the two-legged. They will be freed,” he growled.

“Of course, I am sorry.” I was ashamed of the suggestion.

“Do not be. You were doing what warriors do, finding options to make sure we are victorious.”

“Everyone needs to be informed,” I said.

“If our kind is to live on here or elsewhere, we must win this battle. They must understand that. This battle decides the fate of all dragons. What has helped us so far will stop, and the two-legged beasts will end us.”

“Why are they helping us?” I asked him.

“I do not know for certain, but Nature gave us a gift few were permitted to have. They are helping us for the same reason Nature felt she could give us magic and not others. Why she trusted us above others, I have no idea, considering what the Aethereal Dragons did.”

We parted ways, doing what each of us needed to get the clan ready. The Winged Dragons were ready for another chance to avenge their fallen kin.

“We are not here for revenge. We are here to fight for the living, so it is possible for our kind to live in the peace we deserve. For this to happen, we must free our enslaved, and we must eliminate the ones who know we exist,” I told my Winged Clan.

My kin roared out their readiness, and it rocked the mountaintop that sun-cycle. Red rocks fell from the heights to the forest below, sending sky-lings scattering. If the enemy was within ten miles, they heard us.

I met Adner at the lava pool. The amount of them who had healed within the dark-cycle astonished me, and the losses were limited.

“How many are ready to fight?” I asked Flamnor.

“We have numerous who are able, but most do not want to leave our mountain. They fear being away from the lava and standing defenseless again.”

“Do they want us to fight their battle for them? They expect us to free their kin from enslavement for them?”

The young leader growled deep in his chest.

“No one fights our battles, and what do you mean, enslaved?”

Adner stepped forward.

“I was given information saying our kin are in those wands, and we have to free them before we can go to our new land.”

“They are in there?” His mother stepped forward.

“Yes, Fire Mother,” Adner told her.

Tears touched her eyes, but did not fall.

“Our able Fire Dragons will leave the mountain,” Fire Mother said, then walked away.

I looked at the young leader.

“You heard her. They will leave the mountain.”

I stared at the young Fire Dragon for a moment, then we left. Adner did not tell me where we were going, but I soon deduced our destination. We followed the gorge to the valley, where we rested upon our arrival. We headed to the colony to let them know the war was coming and our leaving prior to the conflict was no longer a choice.

The Chief came to the sand with intense sorrow on his face. Adner communicated well enough with him to discover the death of Yara had been a significant loss for his colony. She had been their last connection to the aloof Nature god. Without Yara, the colony no longer had a teacher to learn their place in the ecosphere and teach it to them.

“We are sorry she felt the need to give her life for our newling,” Adner told him. “We will make sure you do not have to make any additional sacrifices for us. The war is happening on the opposite side of those mountains.”

Adner pointed to the left.

“You stay on this side. We will ensure they do not come here.”

“What happens when you leave?” the Chief asked.

“None will be alive when we leave,” I told him in our tongue. Adner made sure he understood.

The Chief bowed; his eyes never left us. A new look covered his face, one of slight fear. He knew if we decided none could live with the knowledge of our existence, it meant the destruction of his colony, regardless of their kindness. Adner paused, searching for words he might communicate to ease the colony leader’s mind, but what words could? Two-legged beast blood was to be spilled. We had no intention of touching the colony, but convincing these peaceful two-leggeds proved impossible. The colony learned of the horrors inflicted on the dragonkind by the paws of their own kind. They understood forgiveness was not in all our hearts. If we did not win the war, the two-legged beasts who followed us here would without hesitation harm them, even kill them.

“We have so many lives in our paws, Winark,” Adner said, as if this was the first cycle he had felt the weight of a clan on him.

“Have you not shouldered the heaviness of your clan’s survival?” I asked him. He had led his kin so well that, even with his youth, I had not doubted that he was their leader.

“No,” he said, his voice cracking, “I was their seer only. It was my mother who led, and when we get to the new land, it will be my sister.”

“Your females lead?” I asked, struggling with the rarity of such an idea.

“Yes, the Spirit Dragon males are the seers and healers. The females lay the eggs that bear our newlings and lead our clans. They are the strong ones. Have you not seen it?”

“No, Adner. You are their leader. They look to you,” I told him.

“That is only because my sister gives me strength.”

“I do not think so. I have seen great strength in you. You have done what no other has. You have brought all dragonkind together.”

“Now you sound like my sister,” he said, refusing to see what he had done for us. Without him, dragonkind would have died long before we reached the sacred mountains that had sheltered us in those last sun-cycles.

Together we flew to the Water Dragons. They swam near the naturally constructed dam as if they had been waiting for us. We told them war was coming, and we would be freeing our enslaved. Adner told Water Mother the words spoken of her daughter, and she was proud.

“She will be fine when we leave. She is destined to be here,” Adner told her.

“I know,” Water Mother said with no less sorrow than the Chief had knowing about the old female’s energy being celebrated. “It will be hard leaving her.”

“Yes, but you must. This is no place for us now. We cannot be unseen and if we are here, the knowledge will remain. She will be unseen. As long as one of us is here, there will be a threat not merely for the one left but the hidden ones also and to this ecosphere,” Adner told her, his eyes never leaving hers.

“I understand, and I will depart when we must.”

Water Mother broke eye contact, and I grew concerned.

“Alright, the two-legged beasts will approach from downstream. We do not want them to reach the gorge. So, they should not get here. There are just five of you, and we wish you to stay out of the fight. I do not even want you to send water bombs. If the battle goes wrong, you must hide.  Sending those will tell them where you are. Do you understand?” I asked them. “That includes the new ones. They must stay hidden, or they will not survive here.”

“We understand,” Water Mother answered for them. “I will make certain Yara understands as well.”

“We will win,” I told them, looking at each. “We will go to our new ecosphere.”

In my words was a promise. Could I keep it? It was unclear, but my soul’s energy would be extinguished if I did not.