Dragons Awakening
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Training with Dragons

Akolo drained another water bottle. Who knew using telepathy was such thirsty work? Across the plateau, Jokul’s tail dug into the hard-packed ground as his neck stretched over the side. Eating again. Having your mind controlled must be hungry work. Akolo smirked. It had only been a couple hours, and he was getting the hang of this.

The black dragon swooped down from the sky, stirring up the thin layer of ash coating the ground. He had been checking on activity at Mt. Vesuvius while Jokul let Akolo pick his brain. Well, more like pick the lock keeping people out of his brain. Akolo managed to convince the ice dragon to freeze the boulder where Zi like to sit, stand on his back legs and eat a tree limb. The last one hadn’t earned him any friendship points with the white giant, who promptly disappeared and spit frozen toothpicks at Akolo’s feet.

“He bathes in the lava,” Ezer said, “like it empowers him. Everything else is ash.”

“It looks like the plume is thinning,” Akolo said, shading his eyes and squinting toward the nearly translucent emissions billowing into the air above the mountain.

“Yes. Soon he will be visible to the watchers.”

Not good news. And it seemed like someone had already sent in photographers. “Did a plane fly over?”

“Qwystanak spit fire balls at it. The plane burst into flames. No survivors.”

“Fire balls,” Jokul said, trudging closer to them, still chewing on rocks. “That’s new.” Obviously, there was no social standard against talking with your mouth full if you didn’t use your mouth to talk.

“He didn’t use them in your battle,” Akolo said.

“He didn’t need them. We came within range of his fire stream. The balls triple that range.”

“More bad news,” Jokul said.

“That’s all we get today.” Zi grunted as she topped the steepest portion of the trail from below. She wore a thin black backpack. Straps securing it across her chest and around her trim waist.

The top of his ears burned. Her frame was slight, but the snug straps drew attention to her chest. Get a grip, man. His breath hiccuped, while he returned his focus back to the dragons. World is ending and all that.

“I’ve had another vision,” she said. She strode up to them, opening her water bottle at the same time. After several swallows, she recapped the bottle and proceeded to outline what she’d seen.

Apparently, her wealthy father flew toward Italy in his private jet. At some point, he got close enough to draw fire from the red dragon. Based on Ezer’s new information, the plane didn’t need to fly that close to be within striking distance.

Zi shifted from side to side as she relayed her vision. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed. The water bottle crinkled against her hands. Crying? Akolo came up blank trying to imagine that.

“So, I’ve come to ask ask a favor.” She dropped her gaze, stepping closer to the black dragon. “Will you to take me to his plane, Ezer.”

Did he have water in his ears? Akolo gaped at Miss Boss-Everyone. Where was this beseeching tone and shy demeanor coming from?

“We might not replace it in time,” Ezer said at the same time Jokul growled.

“We already know I can’t defeat Qwystanak alone,” the ice dragon said. “Saving one human is not more important than destroying him.”

“You’re right.” Zi sounded resigned. She rubbed her hands over her fleece-covered arms. Akolo’s heart plummeted toward his feet. How would he feel if it was his father who was going to die?

“Stick to the plan,” Jokul said.

Ezer turned his head, lowering it and putting his eye directly in front of Zi’s face. Akolo had been rummaging inside that big head for hours. This posture was different and spoke volumes about Ezer’s attitude toward the girl. She never stepped back or blinked, just stared into the dragon’s face.

“Was the plane over the sea?” Why would Ezer ask that?

Zi shrugged. “It’s pretty hard to fly from the middle east to Italy without passing over water.” Finally. The type of non-answer Akolo was used to hearing from her.

Ezer considered her for a few moments. He stood to full height, arched his neck, and towered over Jokul. And the lowly humans. Intimidating didn’t even begin to describe it. Akolo’s heart did a backflip, beating against his ribs like a prisoner demanding escape.

“Our courses must be meant to intercept in this manner,” Ezer said.

Jokul’s neck slithered beneath Ezer’s, and his tail flicked side to side. Like an agitated cat. Except not nearly as cuddly-looking.

“I cannot carry him alone,” Jokul hissed.

Akolo sidled closer to Zi Yan. Why wasn’t she demanding her own way? He could tell by the hollowness in her pale eyes that nothing was more important to her than going after her father’s plane. Completely understandable. Even if they weren’t getting along that well.

“Can you save him?” Akolo whispered the question close to her ear.

Zi tilted her head sideways. A modified shrug of sorts, Akolo guessed. In the weak sunlight, he could see the tears standing in her eyes. To watch both parents die and be powerless to stop it, he couldn’t imagine. Actually, he could. He had watched his mother die, and for years, his father had been slowly killing himself. Hadn’t Akolo been willing to leave everything behind for a chance to pull his father from the guilt eating him alive?

Akolo rubbed his damp palms against his baggy shorts. Don’t reach out to her. She’s dangerous. Remember?

“Are you forgetting something?” Akolo turned to the dragons, cocking his hip and crossing his arms. Did he have the “big man on campus” posture right?

Neither dragon spared him a glance. Apparently he couldn’t use body language like Zi. “I’ll be with you.”

The white dragon’s snort sent a cloud of ice chips toward Akolo.“You can’t carry much, puny human.”

“But I’m going to control him. Right? I mean, I controlled you.”

Jokul’s silver eyes narrowed. He glanced between the two teenagers. After a searching gaze, he raised his head, scraping it on the underside of Ezer’s chin.

Akolo didn’t understand why he had to remind the ice dragon. That had been the plan all along. Sure, two dragons against one would have been a nice safety net, but if he could convince Qwystanak to fly toward the sea on his own, they didn’t need Ezer’s brawn. Until time to break the alloy scale off.

“Ezerhaydn and I would weaken his armor with our attacks to distract him while you attempted to penetrate his mind,” Jokul said. “A few hours of practice and you’re so certain you can dominate our brother?”

Zi’s soft hand touched Akolo’s forearm. “We don’t even know that you can reach him, do we? Something could have happened in his mind to make him immune.”

Ezer snorted and stomped his foot. The ground swayed. Zi Yan clamped her fingers around his arm, igniting an army of tingles. Akolo widened his stance, balanced against the swell.

“The whisperer is meant to interact with Qsystanank. Why else would the Creator have gifted him?”

Jokul roared, pulling back to aim his icy breath at Ezer’s head. Ezer swung his mace-like tail around and ducked beneath the freezing mist. Jokul hopped away from the steely tail, scrabbling when his back feet met the edge of the plateau. The snap when his wings opened shattered Akolo’s eardrums. He heard ringing and nothing else.

Whatever disagreement the dragons had ended as quickly as it began. Ezer ducked his black head toward Jokul. They stared at each other, communicating outside of Akolo’s hearing. Or maybe not. He narrowed his eyes, prepared to focus his thoughts on theirs.

Jokul turned, “Ezerhaydn agrees to return to the fight as quickly as possible.”

“If my vision is accurate,” resignation slouched Zi’s shoulders as she spoke, “there will be a three-way meeting involving my father’s plane.”

And her visions always came to pass. Her unspoken tag line echoed through his skull. Hardly comforting when the prediction involved her father’s death.

Akolo looked at the sun plunging ever nearer the ridge separating their position from the Mediterranean. Daylight waned.

“Could we leave now?” Zi asked. “My pilot plotted a projected course for my father’s trip. He should be nearing the offshore islands now.”

Zi’s hands dropped to her waistline, and Akolo noticed she wore a bungee cord as a belt. She unhooked the ends and pulled it off, holding it out to him.

“It helps to use this as a safety strap,” she said.

“Won’t you need it?”

She pointed to her stomach. “I have another one.” He saw the black hooks when she pointed them out. They blended perfectly with the buckle of her pack.

He frowned at the pack as she turned her back to him and approached the black dragon. She bowed her head, petitioning the chieftain, he assumed. The flatness of the pack tugged some memory. Then he saw the circular red tab hanging over her left hip.

“You’re going to jump onto the plane?” Akolo’s voice cracked on the last word.

Zi nodded, not bothering to glance his direction. “Ezer’s just going to drop me off.”

“Drop you off? Onto a plane going 500 kilometers per hour?”

Zi pulled herself onto Ezer’s back using his spines. She didn’t answer. It was a rhetorical question after all. Could the dragon fly fast enough to keep her aligned with the jet? At least she had the parachute if something went wrong.

Akolo wadded the bungee in his hand and strode toward Jokul who narrowed his eyes when he approached.

“May I ride on your back, Chieftain?”

“This once,” Jokul said, growling in the back of his throat.

The hair on Akolo’s arms stood at attention, reminding him to pull his sleeves down. He might freeze to death on the ice dragon’s back. At least heat emanated from Ezer to offset the air around him.

Flurries and a few thrums announced Ezer’s lift off. Weren’t they even saying goodbye?

“We’re not leaving yet, whisperer,” Ezer said into his mind. It sounded like he was laughing. Dragons laughed?

Akolo studied the sharp gemlike scales covering Jokul’s legs and back. Unlike Ezer, he didn’t have tall spikes along his back. Instead, he had a strange ridge-something like a backbone down the center of his back and tail, which flattened to an end that looked like a clover of arrowheads. His wings came from the joints at the top of his front legs, whereas the black dragon’s seemed adjoined at mid-body. At the base of the ornamentation on his neck, a cross between a webbed Mohawk and seahorse keel, several flat plates stacked together. Would Akolo be able to balance so far forward on the dragon’s back? He would almost be sitting on its neck.

“Can’t decide how to mount such magnificence?”

Akolo shook his head. “Not sure where to sit.”

Thrumming from dragon wings announced Ezer’s return. The black dragon settled on the other side of the plateau. Zi sprung off with two steps onto his leg and a leap to the ground. Where had her grace been on Everest? Akolo smiled, picturing her splayed in the snow on her hands and knees.

Zi jogged up to him, holding a leather apron and gloves, something she might have stolen from a welding shop. She pointed to the plates at the base of the neck and said, “You can tie this between those. The thick leather should protect you from the cold, at least long enough to do what needs to be done.”

Akolo slipped his hands into the gloves, surprised by how they conformed to his fingers. He pulled himself onto Jokul’s front leg, stepping around the bulbous joint connecting the wing. This close, he could see the gaps between the plates were several inches wide. Would this make him vulnerable the a fiery attack? Akolo rested his foot in the valley between the wing and neck, leaning forward to secure the leather apron on the uppermost plate. The strange spine was translucent with a sharp ridge. It looked like an impaling spike. Something to avoid.

Finally, Akolo stepped into the gap between plates and straddled the leather. It felt like he was sitting on a slab of ice. He placed the bungee cord under the lip of the top plate and fastened it over his hips like a seatbelt. It didn’t seem like enough to keep him in place. Better than nothing.

“Okay?” Zi asked. She stood in front of the dragon’s talon-encrusted paw, so small from his vantage point fifteen feet above the ground.

“Cold,” Akolo said. “Where’s the heater on this thing?”

Jokul glanced back at him, snorting frosty air. “Qwystanak will provide plenty heat.”

Don’t remind me. Akolo gritted his teeth. These dragons had no understanding of sarcasm. And face it, now wasn’t the time to give them a lesson in the fine art of using irony to lighten the mood.

“Good luck,” Zi said, jogging back toward her own mount.

Luck. Would that be enough?

“Help me, God,” he muttered. What could it hurt?