Moonborn

Prologue

The sweeping sound of Indigo's wings rushing through the cool night air almost lulled Evelyn to sleep, but sheer self-control and discipline kept her awake. Sleeping in the saddle was not an uncommon practice, especially on long-distance flights, but this mission was too important to take even a short nap on the job.

She kept herself awake by running through the plan for the millionth time; while the mission wasn't impossible, it didn't allow room for mistakes. They needed to get into and out of enemy territory as fast and as quietly as possible. With luck, what they were charged to take wouldn't even be discovered missing until the next morning.

With a sigh of apprehension she leaned against Indigo's neck, feeling a wave of reassurance surge through the link in their minds to combat her nervousness. She smiled briefly and turned her attention to scanning the skies around them. It was an overcast grey and already starting to drizzle. By the time they got to their destination several hours later the sun would have set completely and the rain would be thicker-the perfect weather for an undercover mission. Unfortunately, it was also the perfect weather for enemies to be tailing them, waiting only for the glimmer of an opportunity to take them down.

Evelyn yawned and rubbed her eyes, then straightened herself up when she realized that she was falling asleep. It was funny; she hadn't been able to sleep very well the past two nights, mostly from worry about this mission, but now that she was here, she felt so tired that nervousness and adrenaline couldn't cure it.

"Go ahead and rest," Indigo told her affectionately in her mind. "We can't have you too tired to pay attention when we get there, and the others are still with us, so you don't have to play sentry. I'll wake you up when they leave."

Stifling another yawn, Evelyn looked up into the clouds and saw the dim silhouette of a dusty orange dragon dipping through the clouds about a hundred feet above them. Looking down, she saw a pale blue dragon a hundred feet below.

What determined a dragon's color was the color of the sky at the time of their birth, usually the first pigment that they saw when they first exited the egg. While about a quarter of them were some shade of blue, the others took their pigments from sunrise or set, the times when the sun's magical energy was at its zenith. Dragons were magical creatures, and as by the normal rules that governed life, they were too dense to fly, but the sun, being the ultimate source of energy, supplied the magic that allowed dragons to live. Consequently, dragons were only born under the sun, except for the Age of Darkness, when the enemies of the Wings had stolen eggs and mutated them into horrors that wreaked havoc on the land.

Evelyn shook that last thought away, determined to stay away from thoughts of dread. She settled down and rested her head on Indigo's deep blue scales, wrapping her sheepskin cloak more tightly around her in an effort to keep off the rain.

Others were more qualified than she and Indigo were, but they had not the advantage of Indigo's dark blue scales, which would hide him more from the enemy than yellow or light blue. Of course, the rain would do a thorough job of hiding them from enemy eyes, but any advantage was to be exploited, in order to ensure success. They would ordinarily have teleported to their destination, space-hopping being the dragons' greatest skill, but this mission needed stealth to work, and a bright flash of dragon-magic was not the way to do it.

Evelyn felt herself nodding. The constant motion of Indigo's wings was very soothing, as well as the rocking motion as he flew. Her worry finally eased as Indigo kept pushing reassurance along their mind-link, and she let herself relax . . .

#

"Hurry!" Evelyn shouted in Indigo's mind, though she hardly needed to; he was already going as fast as he could. The sounds of pursuit behind them were getting closer, and she leaned down low to Indigo's saddle as several arrows flew above and around them.

"Spinning-" he warned her, right before he curled wings in and spun as he flew, in order to increase his speed and make a minimal target for the arrows. Indigo pulled out of the spin once they had gained enough distance to safely open a portal back to the stronghold, where their pursuers wouldn't be able to follow them, if they were quick enough. As Indigo concentrated, a spinning, shimmering blue circle appeared in the middle of their flight path, then suddenly expanded into an oval that depicted the sky above the stronghold. A moment later they were halfway through, Indigo prepared to close the portal the second after the tip of his tail in order to keep anybody from following. Evelyn glanced back to make sure nobody was too close on their tail, and that was when she saw the hailstorm of long-distance arrows flying, too close to avoid. She mentally shouted a warning to Indigo as she desperately clutched the object in her arms, knowing with dread that it might be too late.

He closed the portal the second that his last scale was through, but it wasn't fast enough. They both screamed in pain and terror as the arrows fell, one on Evelyn's shoulder, and a half-dozen tearing Indigo's wings to shreds. They tumbled out of the sky as his wings failed, and Evelyn found herself free-falling as the girth on the saddle snapped.

She panicked, suddenly very much afraid. She'd free-fallen before, in training and for fun, but Indigo had always been there, waiting to catch her. How much would the ground hurt? Would death be instantaneous? The ground was rushing up far too quickly, as little as she could see in the pre-dawn light. She tried to shut her eyes, but fear kept them open.

Suddenly, below her, Indigo angled himself and slowed his descent as much as he could by flattening himself out. Evelyn shivered involuntarily when she realized what he was about to do. "No," she pleaded with him. "I can't live without you. "

"You...must," was Indigo's answer, weary with pain. In the next moment he had caught her in his front talons, and Evelyn wept freely as he cradled her. Then they hit the ground.

It wasn't nearly as big a shock to Evelyn as it was to Indigo, but she still felt his pain and cried out when several of his bones cracked. She kept a chant going in her head, struggling to keep out the thoughts that said his death could not be too far behind.

"Indy? Just a little longer...please. Please. Help will come soon. Please don't go." She broke down into sobs flinging her arms around Indigo's neck, oblivious to the pain in her shoulder and unable to get another coherent thought out.

She listened to his wheezy breathing above the sound of her own sobs, dimly aware of noise in the distance, but all too aware that any help on its way was already too late. "Indigo..."

"I'll always catch you, 'Lyn." His mind-voice was faint, but had a slight air of triumph about it. "Always."

Then he passed away. Evelyn listened to the silence, curled up by Indigo's head and no longer sobbing. The emptiness within her was too great. She lost herself in memory, trying desperately to hold on to just a few seconds ago, when Indigo had been alive, ignoring just as desperately the blank void in her mind.

The echo of his voice resonated deeply in her mind. "I'll always catch you, 'Lyn. Always."