Apocalyptic Dragon Riders

Chapter 3

Maybe it was sensing the dangerous aura radiating from the gold dragon, Coin, but the fire dragon instinctively backed up a few steps, its wing shifting protectively in front of its rider. It stared at Coin nervously, ready to react at the first sign of trouble. Everyone knew gold dragons were notoriously proud and defiant, and they were among the most dangerous dragons to form a knight’s pact with.

Coin merely snorted in response, curling up in a lazy-looking sprawl and pretending to doze off, clearly unwilling to bother with this “weakling.”

Misel, the fire dragon, was still under a thousand years old — barely past adolescence for a dragon. The sight of a creature whose very nature was boldness and blazing fire, a living furnace wreathed in smoke and sulfur, trying to sneak around like some would-be assassin was absurd. Fire dragons were walking bonfires; they drew attention wherever they went. For Misel to try to copy a shadow dragon’s stealth technique was laughably out of character. The poor beast had clearly been dragged into this nonsense by its rider, Akka, and was now wasting its time on completely useless tricks.

Akka must have been beaten badly by their senior, Gedael, to have come up with such a harebrained idea. Morin could guess with his toes that Akka’s recent weird behavior was a direct result of being crushed in training and trying to find a way to make up for it.

“Of course you’re not worried, Morin. Your gold dragon might not be the fastest, but its physical strength and defense are insane — only the black dragons can match it. I’ve been run ragged these last few days. Gedael keeps drilling me and Misel, telling me we’re too offense-heavy, no balance, too many openings just begging to be exploited. So I thought — why not learn one of Gedael and his shadow dragon Skai’s tricks? You know, fight fire with fire. Nothing crushes someone’s spirit like beating them with their own technique!”

Akka’s “Ninefold Sunflame Battle Qi” still flickered faintly around him as he pulled off his helmet, revealing brown hair and the annoyingly handsome face of the kind of sunny young man who made girls scream. Unfortunately, the wry grimace on his face ruined the effect and made him look like he’d just swallowed something bitter.

Dragon Knights usually trained in techniques that matched their dragon’s element, allowing them to fight as one and unleash their full potential.

There were, of course, rare cases where a knight and dragon could resonate and form a contract despite having different elements. Some lucky few even found pairings that enhanced one another — like wind and fire, or water and lightning — producing results far greater than the sum of their parts. But such combinations required incredibly fine control and perfect synergy to avoid blowing themselves up.

Only at very high levels of mastery could someone truly turn an elemental mismatch into a strength, turning disadvantage into miracle with sheer skill and intelligence.

Some dragons, for reasons of their own, didn’t care about matching attributes and still chose human partners. But such cases were vanishingly rare, with only a handful recorded in all of dragonkind’s long history.

That’s why soul resonance was considered the foundation of becoming a Dragon Knight — but even then, it wasn’t a guarantee. There were plenty of knights who ended up abandoned by their dragons, unable to control their partners and eventually stripped of their dragon flute altogether.

Most couldn’t handle such a brutal fall from grace. Many once-promising geniuses quietly withered away, forgotten by history.

Which is why becoming a true Dragon Knight was such a dazzling, revered achievement.

Akka and his dragon Misel were a perfect match, fire knight and fire dragon. Their combined power grew by leaps and bounds, just as the legends said it would.

Morin and Coin, on the other hand, were one of the extremely rare light-and-metal combinations. Morin’s old mentor, Sir O’Hagan, had been shocked when the two of them resonated and formed a pact. The world had elements like metal, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, lightning, light, and darkness — with some rarer ones like ice, poison, space, time, and blood. Light and metal weren’t opposing or complementary — they were an unheard-of pairing.

There were few Dragon Knights to begin with, and even fewer with mismatched attributes. There were almost no records to study, no paths to follow — most knights in Morin’s situation had to fumble their way forward, carving their own unique path to power.

“Come on, Akka. You’re a fire dragon knight, not a shadow dragon knight. Even if you spend your whole life mimicking shadow techniques, you’ll never be able to pull them off — they’re born with it. Gedael’s dragon is a natural master of concealment and ambush. Nobody can match them in a sneak attack. But if it’s a straight fight? You and Misel win every time. Dragon Knights are supposed to use their heads and fight smart, not just play around with their power like a toy. Fire is all about offense — keep attacking until the enemy can’t fight back. The best defense is an overwhelming offense. Why waste time learning to defend?”

Morin’s advice was kind, but he couldn’t help but feel that a fire dragon skulking around like a thief was ridiculous — a joke, really. He could already imagine Akka getting stripped of his Dragon Knight honors for teaching such disgraceful behavior to a young dragon.

Coin had already covered his eyes with a massive claw, as if unable to watch this humiliation. Poor Misel. What kind of rotten luck did it have to get stuck with a rider like Akka? Maybe Coin should just do the poor dragon a favor and get rid of the guy.

The gold dragon bared its gleaming fangs and seriously considered whether adding one small knight-shaped snack to its diet would be worth the trouble.

Every Dragon Knight was a solitary powerhouse, and they guarded their abilities jealously. Their secret techniques were life-saving trump cards — the kind of thing you didn’t reveal even to your spouse after a lifetime together. Knights hated giving away their edge and preferred everyone else to stay weaker than them.

Morin wouldn’t have bothered giving advice at all if Akka hadn’t been his one true friend from their brutal training days — and a noble, no less — and one of the few to rise to knighthood alongside him.

A dragon’s elemental affinity came from the gods’ gift. There was no “strong” or “weak” element — only strong or weak wielders. Even opposites like fire and water could produce miracles if mastered at the highest level.

“You know, Morin, I think I’m starting to get it now,” Misel finally said, flashing a toothy grin at Morin. On a young fire dragon, that grin looked a lot more predatory than grateful. Then Misel turned and rolled his massive eyes at his rider. “Akka, you’re such an idiot.”

Coin looked at the fire dragon with what might have been ten thousand percent sympathy. Knights chose their dragons — but dragons chose their knights, too.

Dragon Knights weren’t just dragon riders — they were their partners’ guides and mentors. Humans grew up in a decade or two; dragons took a thousand years just to reach adulthood. With lifespans stretching tens of thousands of years, dragons often grew listless, even lazy.

Though their bloodlines gave them instinctive knowledge and natural skills, dragons were left to figure out the rest on their own — to slowly gather wisdom over the millennia so they wouldn’t go mad from boredom.

“Don’t say that about me, Misel! You could at least give me a little face!” Akka looked miserable. Getting roasted by his own dragon in front of his best friend was beyond humiliating.

He started waving his arms, trying to defend himself. “I was just trying to do something good for us! Imagine Gedael’s face when we hit him with his own trick — wouldn’t that be awesome?”

“Ugh, you i***t. You seriously don’t understand that opposing elements clash? If dragons could just mix and match attributes like that, we’d have multi-element dragons running around everywhere. But we don’t. Even dragons born with two elements are so rare they only show up once in a million years — and do you think a dragon that special would ever agree to be some puny knight’s mount?”

With a loud boom, Coin slammed his massive head into a pile of rocks like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Stone meant nothing to a metal dragon; the pile crumbled like tofu.

Then Coin shot back up, wings flaring wide, extending several gleaming, blade-like spikes that pointed straight at Akka.

“Little fire lizard, you want me to just put your i***t knight out of his misery? Keeping him around is an embarrassment to dragonkind!”