Rhiannon - Dragonrider

Chapter Thirty Two - Breaking Liberty

I'd been looking forward to working with the new, wild dragon but I almost changed my mind when I saw him arriving. He was a huge beast, nearly as long as Rhiannas, though a fair bit skinnier. He was almost black but flashes of red sparkled off his scales in the sunlight. There were four nonda flying in formation around him, holding him in a tight mind lock, but he was still struggling against their control.

"He's a big lad," Zalibar said as I climbed onto Lippit behind him. "Come on, let's get on up to him. I don't want him coming down here and panicking the nags."

Once up to height, we cruised over to the mighty beast and, as Zalibar held Lippit just above the new dragon, I dropped onto his broad shoulders. "Easy there, boy," I whispered gently to him, even though I could feel the waves of fury and resentment crashing against me when he noticed me in his mind. "Easy boy," I reassured him, "soon you're going to fly."

I checked my spurs were firmly lodged then gave the others a mental shout, telling them to back off. "Get behind and above us!" I told them. "Then dive down behind us as soon as you let him go. I don't want him coming round and attacking you."

"Strangely enough, I can live without that pleasure, too," one of the fliers murmured, but he was silenced by a ferocious glance from Zalibar.

"Okay! Give me five seconds then let him go!"

I flipped into the cloud world and watched as the locks were released from his jagged, pulsing cloud. It took the wild dragon a few more moments to realise that they'd let him go. I hovered on the edge of his cloud and, when I saw that he was about to unleash his frustration, I encouraged him with a shout of, "Let's go!"

He exploded in a wild paroxysm of rage, swinging furiously around, looking for someone... anyone... to attack. He saw the retreating fliers and charged after them, spilling flame as he went.

But, by now, they were far enough away so I had time to bring him round, giving him tiny little nudges that he didn't even notice. Before long, I'd steered him away from them and we were tearing out to sea at an astonishing speed.

It was only then he noticed that he had me on his shoulders.

And, of course, he just exploded.

He bucked and twisted in mid-air while thrashing around with his shoulders. He simply had to shift this unbearable insult to his dignity. Of course I needed to keep my will wrapped solidly round his crux. But I still had to risk a couple of blink-transitions back into the base domain to check that my spurs were holding true and that my grip on his crenels was still solid. If he did manage to throw me, he was never going to let me hit the sea!

Throughout that first mad paroxysm, I didn't try to control his rage. Instead, I used our mind link to talk to him... to encourage him... to urge him on to try even harder. I didn't want him to forget I was there. I just wanted to confuse him and gradually plant the seed of an idea that he was doing it all for me.

Then he tried to attack me. He strained his neck round to bite me and then rolled in mid-air to hammer me away with his tail. But of course nothing worked. With me sitting astride his neck like that, there was no way he could reach me. He tried bucking and stalling and even rolling in mid-air, in an attempt to throw me loose. But my spurs held true and I stayed glued to his neck.

I kept feeding the praise and encouragement straight into his ragged, pulsating mind. I wanted to build up the idea that he was working for me, not against me. And his savage passions were being fed back to me across our link, coming out as a wild excitement that my implanted node couldn't completely muffle. "Go on," I found myself screaming out loud to him. "Show me you're the best!"