The League of Dragon Riders

Trees Are The True Killers Of Dragon Riders

I wake up to Erin softly shaking my shoulder. I groan and roll away from him, desperate for more sleep. I can hear him laughing as he grabs my blanket and yanks it off me. I sit up and glare at him with folded arms. He stares back at him with a wide smile on his face. He holds the blanket out to me and I out for it. 

“Why?” I demand as I snatch the blanket back from him. He folds his arms and raises his eyebrows before nodding toward a plate of bread and cheese sitting by my bread roll. I yank it off and start eating but Erin reachings out his hand and I let him pull me to my feet as I stuff the cheese in my mouth. I pause for a moment as I chew the cheese. 

“So,” Erin’s voice echoes softly off the cave walls as I force myself to eat dry bread. While I had to work, I was spoiled with decent food while I was with my aunt, “we still need to train both you and your dragon. You both need to figure out how to handle combat.”

“Is that why you woke me before sunrise?” I ask without looking at him. Surprisingly, I had fallen asleep last night. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a good sleep. 

“Yes,” he bows his head slightly and leads me toward the entrance of the cave where our dragons stand waiting for us. I give Jordan’s head a pat before shoving the rest of the bread into my mouth and climbing on his back. Maxwell has an extra saddle that fits him but Jordan refuses to wear it so I get to ride him bareback.

Yay.

“Alright,” I say as I grab a hold of Jordan’s little horns, “I’m ready when you are.” 

“Let’s go!” Erin calls out as his dragon jumps into the sky. I watch for a moment before I give Jordan a nod and we burst into the air after him. It will always be amazing to be able to do this. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. 

“So, combat?” I ask as we fly beside each other. In the sunlight, Erin doesn’t seem as frightening as he had the night before. Perhaps it was just a dream and I have nothing to worry about. It’s hard not to be paranoid when something is constantly after you. In the morning sky, however, it is hard to stay wary. I can practically feel last night's fears melting away and out of my mind.

“Yes, follow me,” Erin, or more correctly, his dragon dives toward the ground and I follow suit. He twists and rolls in the air. I tug softly on Jordan’s horns and we copy his movements as we fall through the morning air. 

“Keeping up?” he yells back. I don’t answer as I hold in a scream. Jordan opens his wings and we glide over the trees, perfectly in sync with Erin. His dragon spins his body and we follow moments afterward. 

“Ready for the hard part?” he calls back and dives into the trees. I freeze for a moment as we keep soaring forward. I can see Erin darting in and out of the thick trees. Jordan glances back at me and I let out a moan as I steer Jordan downward. 

The trees here are tall and thick but we easily dodge them as we fly at speeds I don’t even want to think about. Jordan is a fast little dragon, faster than Midnight, and does everything I steer him to do. 

Even when I make the wrong choice. I scream as I lead us straight into a tree. We go flying in opposite directions and I tumble down the slight incline for a moment before a tree stops me. I groan as I wait for my vision to stop spinning before forcing myself to sit up. The forest is quiet except for a few critters running from the girl that had interrupted their quiet morning.

“Erin!” I yell as I stand, using the tree to support myself. I look around but Jordan is nowhere to be seen. I can see the tree we knocked over a few yards above me. I groan as I use the trees around me to climb up it. Maybe I’ll be able to see where Jordan fell. 

“Alaina!” I look up and see the underbelly of his dragon as he glides above the tree line. 

“Down here!” I yell up for him. He doesn’t seem to hear me as he disappears from my view. I sigh and look around. I groan as I see a trail of something large heading in the opposite direction as me. I start down it, groaning as I hold my side that had slammed into the tree. I limp forward and catch myself as I stumble through. My body is in pain but I don’t think anything is broken. 

“Jordan?” I call out and I sigh in relief when I hear a low growl. I step into a small clearing that isn’t noticeable from above. Jordan lay in a small pond with his tail curled around him. I step into the water before he lungs at me, knocking me back onto the forest floor. I have no fear as I face his mouth of sharp teeth. I only start to fear when he lunges forward. I close my eyes but feel no teeth. Instead I feel something long and slimy stretch across my torso. 

“Oh, gross!” I call out as I roll out from under him. He looks like he’s almost smiling when he trots closer to me and bows his head slight as he waits for me to climb on. I sigh as I step closer to him, flicking drool off my arms as I did so. 

“Glad to see you’re not hurt,” I tell him as I climb on. He doesn’t wait for me before bursting into the air. I laugh as we clear the trees and he flaps his wings, taking us higher and higher into the sky. I can hear Erin catching up to us but I don’t look back at him.

I don’t need him to ruin this moment. 

Two months. I train everyday for two months straight. Every morning I wake up and go out to train with the dragons with Erin before the sunrise. It is always with Erin. We always wake the other two up when we get back and nothing is ever said about our morning outings. There were times I thought they didn’t know we went out but that’s a ridiculous thought. Our outings aren’t a secret. 

I train everyday with Fergus in hand to hand combat. He teaches me how to sword fight and how to block a punch without hurting myself. He takes me down  rather easily but insists I do better every time.

I never believe him. 

Maxwell is teaching me how to sneak. He shows me how to sneak past people and how not to be seen. I’ve gotten so good that I can sneak food away from Fergus. I never get very far, though, because he can smell it leaving his side. Maxwell is the one that tells me there is more to being a dragon rider than riding dragons. It is our job to protect people and sometimes we have to sneak around to do that. Sometimes we have to play dirty. He tells me my father knew that best of all. 

Luckily, in these past two months I don’t dream about my dad. I think, though, that I was a little too worn out to dream of anything at all. Even my red dragon nightmares haven’t shown their faces for sometime. 

“What are you thinking about?” Fergus asks as I build the fire. I smile at him as he starts to help me. I think for a moment as I sit back on my heels. There has been so much running through my head these past two months but I can’t bring myself to bring them up to him no matter how much I want to. 

Instead, I give him the easy answer. 

“These last two months,” I answer him, “they’ve been amazing but I’m exhausted.”

“Well, perhaps we need to do something new,” he says with a wide smile. I watch as he rubs his hands together and lets out a little chuckle. 

“I don’t think I like the sound of that,” I tell him, “what is it?”

“I can’t tell you,” he giggles, a weird sound for a grown man, “that will ruin the fun. You will just have to sit back and wait for it.” 

“I don’t like this,” I say, “I don’t like this at all.”

“You don’t have to,” he shrugs, “you just have to participate.”

“And if I say no?”

“Oh, you won’t have a choice.”

I glare at him as he walks away from the fire that is just starting to come to life. I smile at my creation before standing up. Maxwell, obviously, is already snoring away. Erin is nowhere to be seen, as he often isn’t at this time of night, and Fergus went off into the darkness of the cave. I watch him leave and wonder if Erin had told him the same thing about the Earth swallowing him. 

 A small voice speaks up in the back of my mind. Erin disappears into the darkness every night and yet I’m not allowed to take a step deeper into the cave. Why can’t I go down there? I don’t fear the darkness. What is he hiding down there?

I sigh as I head toward the entrance of the cave where Jordan lay waiting for me. As I’ve done every night since that horrible dream with my father, I sit on Jordan’s back and play with the temptation to make a run for it. As always, I question myself as I rub his back and wait for the temptation to recede so I can finally go to bed. Without sitting out here and letting it rub off, I’m always restless in bed like I had an unquenchable itch. It isn’t something I can inch by pleasant thoughts. 

No, I have to sit on the edge and have the same debate with myself over and over in my head. 

I look up and wonder how my father figured this life out. If Erin is bad, couldn’t my father have been bad too? I shake the thought out of my head. There is no use thinking bad about the dead. I can’t do anything about my father’s life or what he had spent his life doing. I can’t account for the past dragon leagues and the damage they caused. 

All I can account for is what I’m going to do with the league. I run my hand over the scar on my forearm. This symbol means I’m supposed to lead these people. If I’m supposed to lead them, we are going to change the reputation of the dragon riders. We will no longer be seen as evil and criminal. 

No, I’m going to make our league into something good like I hope my father would have wanted.