The Dream of Shadows

Chapter 7

Together in silence, Klarack lead them across the white frozen planes to where the other rider had claimed to have gotten the saddle from. Their dragons moved without a sound as they moved to what they could only guess would be their friend's burial ground.

Klarack lead them over a hill that overlooked a deep valley carved into the snow, the edge of TheeAgren was once again visible. Hayden knew that they had been flying for some time and was about to ask how much longer it was going to take until he saw a dark stain on the otherwise blank landscape beneath him.

There. Draek rumbled sadly as the silver dragon led the descent to get a closer look at what appeared to be stone jutting out of the snow. All the dragons followed except for Klarack and his white dragon; they remained in the sky. As they neared, Hayden didn't have to rely on Draek's sight to know what he was looking at. It was a stone dragon's wing.

Draek and the other dragons landed, but only Raena got off her dragon. She slowly walked over to the wing with Fre'yan walking behind her with her head held low. The stone wing looked to be an almost perfect wing made of leaves except the color had been drained from them.

Raena dug in the snow slightly until she uncovered part of the saddle, the rider absent from their seat. Raena dug in the pouches along the saddle until she found a small piece of wood with some image carved into it, Hayden couldn't make out the image before Raena tucked the piece of wood into her own saddle bag.

"There is nothing more for us to find here," Raena said as she climbed back into her saddle. Before they took off Fre'yan nudged the green dragon's exposed wing gently. Klarack was waiting for them up in the air; he had been circling above like a bird over its next meal.

"Are ya ready to head back now?" Klarack shouted when they were within talking distance of each other.

"No, we need to see if the others are in this field as well," Rimney shouted back.

"Our cave was just over that ridge, this was close to where we all were when the storm took us," Cass added, looking around for any other signs of their lost friends.

"Why do we need to find the others?" Klarack asked.

"We need to make sure that they are all dead," Raena shouted. Hayden looked over at the young elf and was reminded of Kirin when he looked into her eyes. There was pain there, but it would have to wait, duty came first.

"Alright, let's follow the ridge." Klarack and his white dragon continued in the original direction they had been heading. They figured that the wind had been blowing in that direction, it made sense that their friends might have been forced further down the valley.

It turned out that they were right. They found the next dragon, a blue dragon up against TheeAgren itself. Hayden guessed that they had tried to fly, and the wind slammed them against the mountain peak.

Rimney did not dismount to get a closer look at the tattered stone dragon remains. It appeared that this was the dragon the white rider back at the village had found and removed the saddle from the body. The stone had been shattered around where the saddle would have been, making it easier to remove it.

"Remind me to repay the rider who did this for taking such good care of my fallen shipmate and his dragon." Rimney almost spat at Klarack.

Klarack was a giant compared to Rimney, but he knew better than to say anything, he had seen what she had already done to the rider once.

By midday, they had found all the bodies. Some were nearly buried from all the snowfall of the storm while others had sought to find shelter in shallow caves and had passed shivering and holding on to their dragons.