Saviour

13. I Paint A Picture

Chapter 13.

We shot through the air faster than the speed of sound. Banking left and right as more great blasts of energy headed our way from the jet black dragon that was hot on our tail.

We had risen up into the clouds and used them as an advantage, hiding behind them and doubling back on ourselves. A ball of fire danced in my palm and I launched it at the dragon, watching it bounce harmlessly off of it's armoured skin.

The voice from before seized my body. "I'm coming to get you Alex West. Surrender now and I assure you, your partner will not get hurt. If you do not...well, I can't promise anything"

'Alex! Don't listen to it!' Nikkon's voice interrupted the deeper, more vicious one. 'I need you to stay with me!'

I blinked myself awake again and shook the voice from my head, looking over my shoulder. 'Dive!' I called into his head as snapping jaws appeared from nowhere, clamping down on thin air. We tumbled down so fast that my grip on his neck failed, I fell and saw the ground coming up to meet me. As I span around in the air I saw the dragon change its course and head towards me. I tried to get away but when you're falling, you can't move around too much. A strong foot gripped around me, squishing the air from my chest.

'Alex, you have to get out of there!' Nikkon cried and I saw him flying up towards the dragons eyes, clawing at them whilst dodging the jaws of the beast.

I heard him but my body wouldn't act. I could feel my strength leaking out of me and into the voice of the dragon rider. "That's right Alex...come and join us...just keep giving me more and we'll be great. Famous. Victorious. We will-"

'ALEX WAKE UP! DON'T LISTEN TO HIM!' Nikkon called and forced a picture of my friends into my head. I drew my sword slowly as the grip from the dragon was still tight. When I managed to get my arms free, I stabbed the blade into the heel of the beast. It dropped me in surprise and roared in pain.

Again, I was tumbling. This time I didn't know if I would be caught. I watched the ground getting closer and closer and closed my eyes tightly, not wanting to watch myself die. Two smaller sets of talons hauled me out of the air, wrapping around my shoulders and chest and carrying me away from the scene as fast as possible.

I looked up, the gust from each of Nikkon's wings buffering against me strongly, taking all the air away from in front of me. I gasped for breath and saw the cave in front of us. We had covered a massive distance in a matter of minutes and I got the feeling that some kind of magic had been involved with our escape.

Nikkon held his wings out to slow us down and we disappeared into the dark cavern that was his home. I heard a stone door rumbling shut and I knew that there was no chance of anyone getting in.

Nikkon dropped me to the floor, the flaming torches flaring up and lighting the cavern. He limped over into the corner and laid down, nudging his left wing with his beak.

Sometime during the chase he had been injured, probably when he was trying to distract the dragon from me.

The faint smell of burning reached my nose and I walked over and knelt beside him. Some of his feathers had been scorched black and crumbled to ashes in my hand as I touched them, he winced and tried to pull his wing away but I held it tight.

"How do I heal it?" I asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"You cannot. It will heal in good time. I'm sorry that I let that happen..." He looked as if he had failed me.

"Hey, don't blame yourself, you've done nothing wrong. You were showing me the best place ever remember?" I nudged him and smiled.

He picked up a leg bone of some animal he had devoured long ago and began picking at it, scraping his magnificently sharp beak along the bone, trying to find any scraps of meat that remained. "I still feel I have failed..." He said out loud.

"Well don't. You aren't my pet. We each work for ourselves. Deal? But every now and again we help each other out right? Partners in crime" I grinned.

"Crime is a bad thing though..."

"Nikkon, it's a figure of speech..." I said to him.

"Oh...I'm still getting used to your modern language."

"Don't worry, you'll get it eventually." I reassured him and observed the burn on his wing. "Is this from the energy blasts?" I asked.

He nodded solemnly and arched his neck, looking at it and pulling a few feathers out delicately. It was amazing to watch the contrast between the killing machine and the gentle giant.

"So now we know what they do, we know not to get in their way next time right?" I said and leant my back against his shoulder.

"Yes. I was so slow today." He said.

"You call that slow? You have to be kidding me! You were going faster than a bullet!" I admired. "You're the fastest thing I've ever seen! I'd much rather have a Griffin than a car" I looked at him.

He crossed his eagle feet and laid his huge head down on them, sighing deeply. I stroked my hand over the feathers on his neck and calmed him down.

"You're the best partner I've ever had." I tried.

"I'm the only partner you've ever had" he laughed.

"Well...yeah, but...you're still the best." I said, "just try and get some rest, I'll wake you if anything happens."

He let his eyelids close slowly and soon enough his breathing evened out, his shoulders rising and falling slowly, pushing my body up and down every time.

I took the chance to look around the cave. Running my hand along the walls, I noticed some ancient cave paintings. Prehistoric finger paintings of Griffins and their riders flying into battle and I realised than Nikkon wasn't the first Griffin destined to have a partner. Hundreds of his relatives would have had the same destiny as him, to meet a human or mortal and become mentally linked to them.

I felt sorry for him. He had known this was his destiny for his whole life but hadn't let any of it distract him from his normal lifestyle. All these years he had watched his family members be destroyed by their destiny, being hunted by the dragon riders and enemy warriors.

I decided to try and make my own cave painting, finding a dripping stalactite and filling a hollowed out skull with water, grinding some strange red bone into dust and adding it to the water to create a kind of paint-like mixture that was thick enough to stick to the rock.

It took about an hour to make. I tried to make it as accurate as possible, putting every detail into the painting of the great feathery mass that was laid thirty metres away from me. I painted the chase that we had been part of an hour and a half earlier and emphasised the ferocity of the dragon and its rider.

Eventually I stepped back and admired my handy work. "Perfect" I said to myself and placed the hollow skull with the paint in it on the floor by my feet before trying to make a pile of all the discarded bones, seeing if I could put them all together like a jigsaw.

I made twenty six rabbacats, a horse and some cow-like creature, adding the skull and painting a Native American pattern on it with the spare paint from the cave art. On the horse skull I drew glasses and a moustache and sat back, laughing to myself quietly.

I had no idea what time it was. I couldn't see the sun and even If I did go to the edge of the tunnel, the stone door was closed, camouflaging us into the side of the mountain.

I drew my sword and began to fight pretend enemies, slashing, stabbing and slicing my way through hundreds of them, a look of concentration on my face. Now that I had cleared all the bones from the floor I could move stealthily across the smooth rock without letting out a loud crunching noise every time I took a step.

Looking back over at Nikkon, I saw his wing twitching a little and thought he must have been dreaming, I didn't want to intrude on his thoughts so left him to it, a small smile fixed on my face.

He slept on long into the day and then all through the night. By this time I had curled up against the wall and was admiring my sword in the firelight before rolling onto my back and letting the thoughts of the day take over me.