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Dragons perched above the cliffside.
Gleaming like polished gems in the dawn light that saturated the valley between human and dragon territory. Craggy rock and dense forests divided by wide rivers on one side and vast plains with tall grasses and the scattering of villages separated by cobblestone roads on the other. Between the territories, an immense amphitheater was created to support thousands of humans and dragons alike.
The very air felt tense and vibrated with excitement, the older and more mature dragons perched along the cliffs looking down over the hustle and bustle of humans and young dragons within the amphitheater. Younger dragons were closer to the hot sands of the amphitheater floor, scrutinizing the Selected humans and probing their thoughts tentatively to feel their aptitude for bonding.
Today was the annual Choosing Day.
A gleaming midnight blue dragon on the cliffside wrinkled his snout in annoyance. Shouts and cheers of excitement filled the air as yet another hatchling, scales still soft and damp from the warmth of the egg shell, selected and bonded with a young human, barely eight years old. Other Selected humans between the ages of six and sixteen also hurried onto the hot sands of the amphitheater, drawn by some tenuous mental link or gut feeling. He felt it was all very… theatrical.
Only certain humans had the aptitude to bond with a dragon partner to begin with and hatchlings were not picky on their first rider. They had very little difficulty finding kinship with equally inexperienced human children.
Oftentimes, when a dragon’s rider passes away, either in battle or from the ever rising tide of time, the dragon will bond with a second or third rider. However as a dragon reaches adulthood at 200 years old, they find the act of bonding to a human child exhausting and trying to find a match becomes difficult. As a dragon reaches adulthood, they retreat further back in their territory and search out a mate or begin collecting their hoard, rarely leaving the caves and vast forests to soar over human plains again.
Once at adulthood, they are eligible to participate in a Second Choosing, a chance for a mature dragon to bond with a rider and use their experience to shape the future relationship between humans and dragons. Usually, adult dragons that have barely grown into their true wingspan and hardened scales will participate in the Second Choosing, searching for a rider with drive to relive their glory days.
But here he was, again, this year at 650 years old. Much too old to find a rider even at a Second Choosing, and too young and inexperienced to join the Old Guard in preserving dragon culture and history.
“Oh hello,dear Veritas. Blessing us with your presence again this Choosing Day?”
A deep hazy lavender dragon landed deftly beside him and Spoke to him along a thin mental link in greeting. She was especially large with a broad wingspan and the gentle curve of black horns adorning her back in a symmetrical pattern, pleasing to the eye no doubt to anyone not Veritas. Instead, he let out a sigh of irritation and wrinkled his snout in distaste as he made it a point to turn away the dragon intruding upon his space.
“Lady Herta, a pleasure to see you again.”
“But, of course, it is my duty after all to greet the hatchlings and the next generation Second riders. Looking for a hopeful Selected this year, Hm?”
“Of course not,” Veritas scoffed as he Spoke to her, irritation ebbing into the tenuous mental connection, “Collecting for my hoard as usual.”
“Ah yes, your dear hoard of knowledge and sciences,” Herta stated condescendingly, “You must know, keeping a hoard of something so… intangible will only lead to difficulties as you mature. Like all creatures, our minds decay at some point and all that beautiful knowledge you keep locked away up here,” Lady Herta’s wing extended to tap the side of Veritas’s head, beside the branching horns that gleamed gold like a crown in the sunlight, “will all fade away into nothing.”
Veritas barely kept himself from snapping his teeth around her wing claw. His lips pulled back to bare his teeth in warning.
“An admirable goal, but you should have chosen something easier: gemstones, ore, human trinkets. By the time you are eligible to join the Old Guard, there will be little for you to give to our cause.”
Lady Herta lowered her head to show off the silver ornament in the shape of a moon attached to her head between both horns, the mark of the Old Guard.
Veritas scoffed again, knowing he’s been incredibly rude to a dragon almost a millennium his senior but being unable to hold his tongue, “If I wanted something easy, I would have chosen it.”
Indeed, the only difficulty he found with hoarding knowledge and sciences was his inability to write. Although his mind was extremely sharp, memories faded and aged and Veritas was just beginning to feel the effects. He could remember his first rider, the feel of her bond, the warmth of her on his back, but he couldn’t recall how she first taught him the common language. He felt ashamed, even if it was a natural occurrence for his species.
“Besides, I am not able to join the Old Guard until the dawn of my first millennium. I will have solved the… complication to growing my hoard by then.”
“Indeed, as you say every decade, Veritas.” Lady Herta bowed her head slightly to the side in acquiescence and signaled the end of the tense conversation.
With a buffeting of wind, other dragons landed besides Lady Herta. A steely silver and bronze dragon with broad shoulders and a slender tail, and a dragon as pale blue as the sky in mid-summer and white petal-like horns sat daintily upon the crown of her head. Both carried a silver moon ornament upon their heads.
“Greetings Lady Herta, and Veritas.” The pale one Spoke softly.
The steely dragon simply nodded to Lady Herta and stared at Veritas with an inscrutable look. This set his teeth on edge and his broad deep cobalt tail whipped unbidden from side to side in irritation.
A resounding echo of a horn or trumpet, some loud human instrument, reverberated throughout the amphitheater followed by a rhythmic beating of drums.
It was time for the Second Choosing.
More dragons flocked to the floor or to close perches in the amphitheater. After all, this was where experienced dragons had an opportunity to take up another human charge, and these dragons and riders would influence the future relationship between the humans and dragons. A Second Choosing comes once every 50 years. A thousand years ago, it used to be common for hundreds of dragons and riders to be chosen in a Second Choosing. But the last one from 50 years ago barely saw a dozen chosen and some unselected humans were wounded when attempting to bond. This trend has worried the Old Guard, but not enough to directly concern themselves with.
Veritas nodded to the Old Guard in the name of respect and beat his wings to dive off the highest perch of the cliffside. An area reserved for the Old Guard, although they had been lenient in his use of the perch in the last century. Perhaps an indication that times and the old ways are changing, but still much too slow for Veritas’s liking.
“Good luck Veritas, I do hope you find what you are looking for.” Lady Herta remarked not unkindly.
He didn’t respond, allowing the tenuous link to stretch and fray until it finally snapped and faded away. Settling in on a lower perch and forcing the younger prospective dragons to move aside, Veritas eyed the Selected Humans being brought onto the scalding hot sands by the humans.
Oddly, Veritas smelled a hint of iron blood in the air that was gone as quickly as he identified it. The scent lingered on his tongue as he opened his mouth to better track the origin, but it had dissipated in the beat of wings fanning the scent into oblivion.
It seems like the humans had Selected only 25 children to participate in this year’s Second Choosing, fewer than any of the previous Choosing Veritas had witnessed. Veritas also noted that their clothing was odd, the majority of the children wore beautifully adorned cloaks and decorated shoes, while the few older teens had well-worn undyed working clothes that smelled of sweat and dirt. Being a Selected was through a specific process passed down from one generation of Seconds or another, kept a close secret in their ranks, so Veritas is unsure how to mark this knowledge as he filed it away in his Hoard.
Lady Herta took to the skies, bathing the amphitheater in her enormous flickering shadow as she circled the theater once before landing again on her cliffside perch with the other Old Guard.
Flaring her broad wings, exposing the translucent lavender webbing beneath, she roared. And as one, the Old Guard followed, drowning out all activity and noise as they marked the start of the Second Choosing.
Dragons and humans alike, stilled, as the small group of Selected stepped onto the scorching sands of the hatching grounds.
Among the selected, Veritas found his focus straying to a small boy, skinny and a bit short for his age, that had a trail of blood dripping from his hairline and down his cheek. His dirty blond hair stuck to the side of his face and a prominent black mark on his neck drew Veritas’s eyes. As Veritas idly assessed him, the boy’s shoulders tightened and then he peered up through the fringe of his hair, directly meeting Veritas’s gaze.
Kinship.
The dragon was struck by a strange sensation when he peered into those distinctly colored eyes. They were so bright, they almost seemed to glow, regardless how the soul behind those eyes appeared. This was not a normal bonding call, no, this was something other. Before he realized what he was doing, Veritas had begun to tentatively reach out a link and–.
A scream pierced through the air.
Dragons roared as the sticky scent of iron permeated the amphitheater and the sands of the hatching grounds were tainted in blood. Many took to the skies in alarm, obscuring Veritas’s sight of the boy in an instant.
His mind was enveloped in a fog with the echoing confusion and alarm of hundreds of dragons, and the Humans had not stopped blaring those screeching horns.
The confusion, the blood, the screaming clouded Veritas’s mind and rationality. It was as if he lost control of the mental fortitude that allowed him to differentiate between his own thoughts and those of other dragons. Now he was confused, he was alarmed, and he growled with the other dragons, flaring his immense wings threateningly and knocking lesser dragons off their perch besides him.
A thread of something pulled at him ever so slightly, like a human hand gently touching his golden horns. It sounded like a quiet gasp of fear.
Veritas focused on it like a life line and pulled his sanity into some semblance of control. “The boy!” Veritas realized with dread, “He’s still down there!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the midnight blue dragon dove off his high perch into the whirlwind of younger dragons that obscured the amphitheater’s grounds. Veritas drew his wings closer to his body as smaller dragons were buffeted off his scaly sides, allowing him to maneuver deftly through the mess and to the hatching grounds.
Pulling out of the dive at the last moment and feeling the painful tug on his back and wing webbing, Veritas landed heavily on the sands amongst a dozen dragons half his size and and less than half his age, the prospective young dragons for the Second Choosing.
They screeched at him, like lesser beasts that human’s keep under their charge.
…please..
Angered, trying to follow that thin thread of a thought, Veritas whipped his wings out and spun his tail to the side and knocked the lesser dragons away.
Revealing the boy, covered in scratches and burns as he curled around an older girl. Both were a little too old to be here as Selected. They bore the same hauntingly bright eyes.
The boy reached up toward him as Veritas lowered his head.
His wings stretched over these two dirty and hurt children, protecting them from the thrashing of wild dragons and screams of the humans. Veritas did not care about the other humans or even the dragons making a fool of themselves in the commotion, but he felt the slight pull of the thread and in his state of disarray he could not refuse.
The boy’s eyes were wide, gleaming like polished gemstones in the flickering light and highlighting the ethereal blush surrounding sky blue. Veritas had no doubt the boy felt the pull as well.
A human hand gently brushed the rough scales of the dragon’s snout.
Within his chest, Veritas noticed an odd sensation. As if something had been wound tight his entire life without him noticing, had suddenly relaxed and warmed. As if he was softly woken from a nap on a warm rock in the setting sun, a current of cool water rushing pleasantly over his tail.
This was not like his first bond. This was something different.
Suddenly, a large dragon landed heavily in the hatching ground sands beside Veritas, kicking up a wave of sand in her wake. Unfurling her enormous wingspan, she pushed the lesser dragons aside with ease.
Then Lady Herta roared, unlike anything Veritas had heard before.
He felt a wave of command Spoken in every dragon’s mind, suffocating the confusion and distress until there was little but submit and calm.
Veritas resisted with difficulty, unease settling in his belly, as he continued to cover the two children that now shook and cried as they covered their ears. It would be almost impossible for any dragon under a millennium to resist a command from Lady Herta, but Veritas was not any dragon.
Humans fell to the ground, covering their ears, and dragons backed up to the edges of the amphitheater, many fleeing deep into the cliffside perches.
Lady Herta demanded attention, and none would refuse her.
As the hatching ground cleared out from the whirlwind of confusion, several dragons remained with their heads bowed to Lady Herta as they stood beside their bonded humans. With one last unwavering glare at the humans, she turned her head and took to the skies in a mighty beat of her wings, churning the spilt blood and sand.
The humans waited a long moment, holding their breath as Lady Herta departed and her shadow faded from view, then several of them ran onto the sands, cries of grief and cheers of relief rising in the wake of the Second Choosing.
The boy stood suddenly, eyes dry and gleaming brightly in the sunlight, and he stepped toward Veritas as he begged, “please, you have to help us!”
Veritas huffed, air from his nostrils pushing back the boy’s dirty blond hair and expelling the loose sand from his clothes. He knew what the boy wanted, it would be easy to tell even without the fresh tying of the bond.
“She is not bonded, she must leave with the rest of the humans,” Veritas stated firmly, whispering down the bond so as not to overwhelm the boy.
“Do something! She’s my sister. She was just trying to protect me; I can’t leave without her. We’ll tell you everything we know!” The boy demanded aloud and Spoke through the fresh bond.
Veritas snorted in irritation, what did these children know about this… incident? He hadn’t wanted to bond with another human, but it had already anchored into place as proven by how the boy Spoke into his mind. Not to mention, he was even projecting his message to the closest dozen dragons. Still influenced by the freshness of this strange bond, Veritas felt his heart beat faster as the boy’s fear infected his emotions. He could already tell he would be a difficult one to tame.
“You heard. Are any of you willing to bond with this human?” Veritas commanded, whipping his head to the side to scrutinize the younger dragons beside him. The window of opportunity was closing as the humans continued to remove those not Chosen and the unselected that could not move on their own. Human and dragon blood alike were still hot on the sands, but Lady Herta would wait for no one in the name of preserving the tradition.
A pale lavender dragon with stripes of black cutting harshly around her joints stepped forward, soft rounded spines along her back and long thin tail betraying her age as in her first century, and pushed Veritas’s protective wings to the side with her snout.
Pulling his wings back along his side, he watched this dragon lean down and extend her snout to the girl.
“You are not eligible for the Second Choosing,” Veritas admonished.
“Neither are you,” She said archly, “but you were seeking any of our kind that would bond with this human girl.”
The girl with the same brilliant eyes as her brother reached forward and touched the lavender dragon gently, her eyes widened in excitement and wonder as the bond snapped into place between one breath and the next.
“Young Herta, your mother–” Veritas started in concern.
“Cannot break a bond already formed, just as you cannot.” Young Herta stated coldly without a hint of unease.
Veritas took a moment to reply, “I will explain to the Old Guard what has occurred. This was a no accident.”
Young Herta nodded, her gaze not leaving her new rider as they both relished in the wonder of a new bond, and Veritas turned back to the boy.
“Thank you,” he breathed, fear and anxiety starting to calm.
Veritas felt a rumble emanate from his chest as the boy rested his hand back onto the side of his snout. “How unbecoming,” he thought sternly to himself, “I should have better control than this.”
“What are you called, boy,” Veritas asked, not unkindly.
“I’m Kakavasha.”
“Kakavasha,” Veritas whispered the name down the strangely familiar feeling bond, and even understanding it was impossible, he still asked, “Have we met before?”
Kakavasha just grinned, brilliant eyes gleaming in mirth, a bright sunset above an ocean.