Dawn's Light

Chapter 5

The world was filled with light and bright colors, yet its intensity didn't hurt her eyes. Celia looked into the sky to see a second, brighter moon in the sky among the stars and the crescent moon.

"Is that the sun? A brighter, permanent moon?" Celia spoke to herself, then quickly realized she was laying on her back in the snow. "How long have I been out?" She became nervous as Verbena didn't respond, as it felt like her mental search was vanishing into an endless void. "Where am I? This isn't Town. How did I get outside?" She looked up to the sky and once again saw the stars, moon, and sun, then stood and brushed the snow clinging to her clothes. After looking around at the snow-covered ground, she realized she didn't recognize the landscape. Hundreds of icy mountains surrounded the horizon.

While the town of Rien's mountain stood alone, while this peak was surrounded by others of various shapes and sizes. All of them were coated from peak to base in massive amounts of snow, just like how every piece of exposed land was coated in snow.

Suddenly, she heard the near silent flapping of feathered wings above her. Celia looked up and watched two massive furred dragons land on the nearby peak. They were Ari and Terran, the first dragons, ancestors of all dragons. Even massive Valiant was half of their size. Their eyes were a striking gold and stood as vibrant pools of color against the stark white of their ice-coated fur. Their powerful muscles and perfectly proportioned bodies were things of legend.

One of the dragons carried a rider on its back, and they leaped off of the dragon the person had been previously riding. "Jude. Stop this." a masculine and strong voice rang out from under the rider's hood. His voice rang with authority, and his golden coat was blazed with the five bars and two stars: the mark of an imaginary and unobtainable rank of Master Guild Master. He outranked everyone, even Guild Master Orthos. Despite not being too close to Celia, the female human could feel his aura of strength and light as it resonated through the air and through Celia's being.

Celia suddenly recognized what was happening around her: this was the time the sun disappeared. She had learned about it in her classes and with the lack of descriptive details, the characters and settings were exactly as she imagined it. This event was the reason the dragon academy even existed and without it, she may not even have Verbena as her friend. The rider, Levi, was revered as the first one to befriend a dragon, then he proceeded to befriend a second. After the sun was stolen, he started the guild in order to train new riders in hopes of one night returning light to the world.

Celia suddenly noticed a short, hunched man wearing a dark cloak with a bone pinning the hood shut at the base. He was standing on the very peak of the mountain, which also seemed to be the highest point Celia could see. "No!" He shouted and raised a hand as if he was grabbing the sun as it descended unnaturally fast towards the horizon. "This power will be mine!" He cackled like a witch and began to chant strange unintelligible words.

As Jude chanted, massive dark, snow-laden clouds formed and swirled ominously above them as an eerie feeling rushed over Celia and permeated the air itself. Instead of simply disappearing under the horizon, the light flew into Jude's hand as if the rays of light were drawn away from the horizon as if he was holding a light magnet. As the light reached his hand, it dulled and lost illumination.

Seeing no other option, Levi lunged at Jude in an attempt to grab the glowing ball of silver-blue light that grew larger at every passing moment, but all he did was break the containment of the light that spread and died out in random places across the once powerful and sunlit land known as Roahla.

"You fool!" Jude yelled in a stereotypical 'I've been foiled' whiney villain voice, "You ruined my plans! Now I'll never control the light of the sun!" Jude continued to attempt to strangle Levi, but swift intervention by one of the dragons swiftly ended the conflict. When faced with dragons as large as Ari and Terran, there was nothing that could stop them from doing whatever they wanted.