Fate of Dragons

Chapter Twenty-Three, Part II

Tesa was vaguely aware of the arrival of the other dragons around her, but it was all she could do to keep Orrie from sweeping her away in his energy. She clung to his neck and focused on her grip, kept her mind on her fingers interlaced with each other, the strain of her muscles, and the feel of his scales as the edges dug into her forehead.

Ever since she had learned she could speak with dragons, Tesa had been vaguely aware that they had an energy all their own. Like magic, she could sense it when she used magesight, dancing around the edges of her awareness. Unlike magic, she had never been able to sense much more than that, and she had never tried. It had always seemed wrong, a violation somehow.

Once she had begun to heal the sick dragons, she had become even more aware of the dragons' unique magic energy. She'd begun to think of it as dragonlight, and she could see how the Karume's magic had attempted to harness it and damaged it in the process.

Now, she was in danger of being swept up in Orrie's magic energy, the life force that made him who he was and gave him his flight, his mind, everything. And there was something else. Something else pressed in, wove into his dragonlight with little tendrils. It seemed familiar. It was gray and grasping. Instead of interacting with the dragonlight, it changed it. A tendril creeped in close to Tesa and grew. The light of Orrie's energy around it turned gray. New tendrils formed.

Tesa fought it back the way she had with the Karume magic in the other dragons. She reached in with her own power and managed to disentangle part of the gray from Orrie's light. The creeping vine shrunk back and Tesa followed it to its source with her mind. She gasped at what she saw.

As she worked, the commotion around her increased and she felt the pressure of Orrie's sickness subside. His body calmed just enough that Tesa was able to open her eyes.

Dragons surrounded her and Orrie in a circle, and not very far away, the small child from Enval stood with arms outstretched. Tesa reached out and listened. She smiled when she heard the child's call. It all seemed to make sense, that another girl from Enval should be able to speak with dragons the way Tesa could.

The dragons surrounding her all felt present, and into that presence Aerix, Neela's green dragon, spoke.

We must fly. I've felt the sickness too. It is something in this land. There is an island out there. Aerix sent a picture of the beach near the temple and the ocean gliding below him, until he reached a rocky island with a sandy and scrubby beach on one side, and rocky cliffs on the other. I felt better there, Aerix said.

Tesa felt the other dragons send the mental signals of acknowledgement to Aerix's thoughts. She opened her mind to listen and heard each dragon's experience of the sickness. Like Orrie, many had brushed it off or tried to ignore it in the name of duty or as secondary to the urgency of the other sick dragons.

But now Tesa knew that the sickness was all the same. It wasn't just the dragons the Karume had attempted to bind. All of the dragons felt it to some degree. She shared her knowledge with Orrie, whose fog had lifted a bit with the presence of the other dragons.

Orrie heaved himself up from where he had sprawled on the ground. He lifted his wings from where they had collapsed across the the ground.

We'll fly to the island, Orrie managed to croak. The other dragons' thoughts quieted, and all eyes looked to Orrie. I can make it, he added with a glare at their concerned stares.

Tesa climbed onto Orrie's back, and he beckoned for Astrid to join, too. To Tesa's surprise, none of the other dragons invited their riders to make the journey with them.

Almost as one, the dragons lifted their wings. Aerix took off first and the other dragons followed. Below, Tesa just caught the stunned expressions of all of the people left behind before their faces became obscured by the distance between them. Astrid clutched her arms around Tesa's waist, but not so hard that she seemed scared.