Here Be Dragons: The Protector

Chapter fourteen: Wastes

This time when they set down, they were well into the wastes. No vegetation of any kind was visible, the only sign of life was Blaze and her passengers. Lukas had been flying in the claws again; when he dropped to the ground, he groaned loudly and stretched his back – requesting that he be in the back seat for the next trip. Already used to Vaylerie having a smile plastered to her face after a ride on Blaze, he was shocked to find her frowning at their surroundings. Having flown over it before, he had become desensitised to the wastes. He had let it fade to just be a familiar backdrop in his thoughts, having completely forgotten how awful it had seemed when he first laid eyes on it. She turned her frown on him and queried, "What caused this?"
"Well, nobody really knows for certain... But if I had to guess, I'd say it was the product of the battle with the black dragon. There are few things I can think of that would have the power to cause such destruction, and only one of them would want to." She gazed out across the dull grey expanse – the ground was almost completely flat, only a small shadow here and there to point out the presence of a slight rise or fall, the hills themselves so small they were unnoticeable in the bleak landscape. Feeling uncomfortable, Lukas searched for something to fill the silence. "Only one question today? That must be a record."
A slight smile tugged at her lips. "Well, if you insist, I do have one: you keep talking about Elements, and that they're different, but somehow related. How is that?"
He scooped up some dirt and shaped it into a long solid rod. He crouched to the floor to draw while he answered, "Well, when The Dragon made the six elements from his scales—"
"Wait, that was real?" She exclaimed, amazed.
Lukas looked up from his drawing to pull a face at her. "Will you ever let me tell you something without interrupting? Yes, that story is real, though I would like to hear how you came about hearing it." He raised an eyebrow, expectantly.
"I read it, actually. It was in a book Ma found at the market. She knows I like those sort of stories..." Her expression saddened again at the thought of her mother. "That was the last thing she ever gave me, and I only had chance to read the first few pages before I burnt it."
A pained whimper rushed out of Lukas before he could stop it. "You did what? Those books are... they're basically our scripture, Vayle!"
"It's not like I tried to burn it... I didn't even try to use magic, so I couldn't exactly aim." She pointed out, defensively.

Lukas just sighed emphatically, and went back to his drawing. He drew three parallel grooves in the dirt, then connected them together through the top, middle and bottom. It looked four small squares within a large square. He sat back slightly and closed his eyes, concentration knitting his brows together. Vayle waited, but nothing happened. "What do those boxes have to do with the Elements?" She prodded.
"Shush, this bit's complicated – besides, it's not the boxes that are important." She sat heavily on the ground. Staring intently at the squares, she tried to work out what else there was within the drawing. 'It's not exactly complex... What else is there to be important about it?' That was when she noticed the colour. One by one, the grooves were filling up with a different colour of powder. When Lukas opened his eyes again, the middle horizontal groove contained a pale grey powder, the two parallel to it holding another shade of grey – so dark, she decided it seemed more apt to call it 'light black'. The three vertical lines had each been split in half by the pale grey line. On her side of that line, the grooves filled with red, yellow, and green; the matching lines on Lukas' side were blue, purple, and brown, respectively. Now he'd completed his drawing, he used his rod to point out specific parts as he explained them. At first, he ignored the grey and light black lines, focusing instead on the colourful ones. "Brown is Earth, green is Air. Their lines are opposite each other, because those elements counteract. Similarly, yellow and purple represent Light and Dark, with red and blue being Fire and Water." He looked up at her to make sure she was following. She nodded to show it all made sense so far, and he got back to it. "Now, that centre line, we call Balance. It isn't a physical thing, it's more of a concept we use to help explain things. The pairs of opposite elements, they're connected – they're like the different ends of the same scale. For example, something with Air energy would be in this green section. If I try to add Earth energy to that, it pushes it further towards the brown end but to get there, it has to go past the balance line. If I add exactly the right amount, so that it ended up exactly on the balance line, the energies would cancel each other out, and whatever it was would be destroyed. On the other hand, the darker grey lines on the outside are Chaos – the point where the energy is so strong that it's unstable." He looked up at her again. "Any questions?"
She looked over the drawing for a few moments, then replied with, "Is it by design that all my elements are on the same side?"
"Almost certainly. This isn't the first version of this diagram, and there's no record where the original came from. I personally think it tracks all the way back to the Prophets – they would have had to find a way to explain their powers to the second wave of Riders, right? I think they took the opportunity to hint at their prediction – after all, since Light is on your side and Darkness on mine, everyone sees your three Elements as 'good', and mine as 'evil'." He had that light in his eyes again. It always crept in when he started talking about the Prophets.

Alas, that was when Jenna walked over, chomping merrily away and holding out a steaming bove bun to each of them. "Don't you just love travelling with a Fire Rider? Even these rations taste good when they're warm." She marvelled, sitting down next to Lukas. The fire rider in question wandered over soon after. Lukas couldn't help but think that Jonah's usual air of nonchalance was missing. 'First Vayle is miserable and now he's worried... What could have gotten into them?'  With a quick flick of his head, Jonah motioned for Lukas to follow.
Jonah led him out of earshot of the others before stopping and turning to face him. Leaning in conspiringly, he whispered, "Has she told you what happened last night? When she woke up."
"Who, Jenna?" Jonah nodded. "She mentioned you said she was acting strange, but said it was all a blur – blamed it on the how hard she hit her head, and I think she's right to. Have you seen the size of the bruise?"
"Maybe you're right." He admitted, "She had just woken up, so she had every right to be confused... It just... it felt like something deeper was happening. I think I'll keep an eye on her just in case."
Lukas saw his chance to lighten the mood slightly. "Well, if you keep heating up her rations, she'll probably take you with her wherever she goes." He clapped his hand against Jonah's shoulder, and they shared a ghost of a smile before they wandered back to where they'd left the others.

Jonah woke Lukas during the night to change the watch – apparently his had passed without any 'crazy tornado sleepwalking', as he called it. The night had a chill about it, so the man in red held Lukas by the shoulders and let some heat seep into him. They nodded to each other, and Jonah jumped into the recently vacated sleeping roll. They had decided to leave Jenna out of keeping watch for now, as they couldn't trust her confusion would cause her to invent issues, or worse: miss one. And so, Lukas fell into the stone chair for the second time that night and looked out across the wastes. There was no movement among the grey ocean. And yet, he swore he could hear a familiar noise. Recognising the sound as the beating of wings, he turned and looked toward the sky. There, against a backdrop of white Hedlight, the incoming dragon was just a shapeless black blob. It was moving very quickly. 'It must be an Air dragon – only they can move like that. But what other powerful Air riders were there? Jenna is with us, and the others fell in the ambush...' When he realised that the dragon wasn't coming from the basin – it was in fact coming from the exact opposite direction – it put him on edge. It pushed him over that edge when Vayle woke up with a gasp to say "They're coming."

He didn't know where they were or what that dragon had to do with it, but he knew it was time to go. They couldn't stand up to another fight like last time. Jonah was barely even asleep when Lukas shook him awake. "Saddle Blaze. We don't have long." Jenna was tossing about in her sleep, and took more effort to wake. Her green eyes were groggy when they finally opened. "Get up, Jenna. We need to run." He rushed over to help Vayle onto Blaze's back. While Jenna extracted herself from her sleeping roll, he knelt to the ground to fashion more spears. He took pains to make them as light as possible – sharpening them to a wicked point to make up for the loss of impact. Blaze took off before he stuck the last one in the dirt holster he's made on his back. Jumping up, he grabbed one of her long talons, and they flew off into the night.