Dragons of Daegonlot by Shanlynn Walker (best ereader for textbooks .txt) 📕

Daxon watched the sun rise slowly and finally peek out from behind the snow-capped mountain peaks. There was a chill in the brisk dawn air that washed away the last remnants of sleep, and as he watched, his dragon companion, Drakthira, or ‘Thira as he normally called her, lazily opened her eyes and yawned, showing off her impressive set of fangs. She stood and stretched and as she did, Dax caught a glimpse of a grey lump of fur curled up in the straw and realized after a moment it was Sylas, the mysterious horse sized dog that could turn into a deadly flesh eating mist in the blink of an eye.

The sound of the door opening interrupted his observations and he turned to see Trakon coming outside carrying a tray that had two steaming mugs on it. He offered one to Dax, and, without a word, stood and drank the strong smelling brew as he looked out towards the mountains. Dax studied the old man for a moment while he drank from his mug, noticing the hunched shoulders and the tight lines around his eyes, as well as the way his lips were pressed into a thin, hard line.

“Nervous?” he asked lightly, trying to ease some of the tension.

Trakon glanced at him briefly and shrugged. “I’ve never actually been inside the Myste,” he said, “but I’ve lived long enough on the edge of it that I know it must be a terrible place.” He glanced over at the stable where ‘Thira and Sylas were drinking from the depression that served as a watering hole. “He’s an exception, somehow, you know. Quite extraordinary.”

Dax watched as the beast in question stood watching ‘Thira drink. The dragon lifted her head and small droplets of water dripped from her snout and landed on the dog’s upturned face, which instantly vanished and was replaced by swirling greyish-green mist. As Daxon watched, the mist once more solidified into the long, narrow muzzle of a dog. Trakon chuckled quietly to himself and Daxon just shook his head. He couldn’t argue. Sylas was extraordinary. And deadly, he mentally reminded himself.

When Dax had first met Sylas the giant mist-dog had tried to play with him, which had resulted in Daxon’s arm being stripped of flesh in a matter of seconds. Fortunately for him the beast had also been able to reverse what he had done, but Dax hated to think of what could have happened had the dog been seriously attacking him. He was still cautious where Sylas was concerned, and not just for himself. He wasn’t sure the dog couldn’t also seriously injure ‘Thira although he seemed to be very fond of the dragon and was seldom more than a few paces away from her, and she didn’t seem overly concerned.

The Myste is not harmful to my kind, she said, startling Dax out of his reverie. Nor to yours…she added mysteriously. Dax wasn’t sure what she meant by that. She had told him the night before that he, too, was a product of the Myste, but he didn’t know what that meant. As far as he knew he was just an ordinary elf that his human foster parents, Borl and Sikir, had found wandering around on Daegonlot. Besides, he wasn’t convinced. He remembered the agony of his flesh being stripped from his bones and he knew firsthand Sylas could very well hurt him.

He focused on the newly acquired bond ‘Thira had bestowed on him and tried to see himself as she did, but that part of her was blocked to him. ‘Thira turned her head and looked directly at him. Some things you must find out for yourself, elf-Dax, she said, before turning away and stretching her wings out to full length and inspecting the small tear barely visible in her left wing membrane. He sighed, frustrated, but pushed it aside and went to inspect her wing himself and put some healing ointment on it.

As Daxon doctored ‘Thira’s wing, Trakon took the empty mugs back inside the cabin. When he returned he was carrying two large packs and an assortment of buckles and straps. He went to Sylas and started securing the straps across his back, forming a harness system to which he attached the packs. Dax nodded to himself in approval. Sylas could easily carry the packs, and what’s more, if he were threatened, he would simply dissipate into mist, leaving the packs where they fell, not hindering him or anyone else in the small party.

When he was finished, Trakon tested the straps to make sure they were tight enough to hold, but wouldn’t interfere with Sylas’ movements while in solid form. After making a few adjustments, he nodded, satisfied, and then turned to Daxon and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Dax could feel the excitement and tension hanging thick around them. He glanced at the mountain pass, covered in what looked like a dense fog, but which he knew now was the edge of the Myste, and anticipation shot through him. Wordlessly he nodded and together the small group set off toward the mountain pass. Just before they reached it Dax looked over the party and tried to imagine what an outsider might think of such a band.

A dragon, a human, a horse-sized dog, and an elf walked into the Myste… He chuckled to himself. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke.

Dax didn’t know what to expect when he entered the Myste, but he thought it would be a gradual change from the early dawn sunshine to the thick, dense fog that was the Myste, but that wasn’t what happened. It was more like they crossed an invisible barrier and were suddenly surrounded by an ever changing world of grey. Looking to his left he saw thick, dark grey clouds that looked solid enough for him to sit on, but to his right there were light, wispy grey tendrils floating lightly on the churning air.

Almost immediately after crossing into the Myste, Daxon realized there was no way for him to distinguish from which direction they had come. This didn’t overly concern him. Sylas was a creature of the Myste, so it stood to reason he knew how to find his way out, and what’s more, ‘Thira could easily fly above it. Of a more pressing concern was keeping everyone together.

Even with his sharp elven eyesight he could barely see more than a few yards in any direction. He was walking behind Drakthira but all he could see of her were her two hind legs and her tail swaying from side to side. He looked behind him and could hardly make out Trakon’s bright blue robe and a set of glowing green eyes that he thought must belong to Sylas, although the body was shrouded in the mist.

Realizing their danger of becoming separated, he called a halt and they all huddled together. “Trakon, do you have any rope in one of these packs?” he asked. The old man nodded and rummaged around in one of the packs that looked to be floating in mid-air. Even right up next to the beast Dax could still only see his glowing green eyes and the hint of a muzzle.

Trakon soon produced a length of rope which Dax took from him and tied securely to Drakthira’s tail. He then looped it around himself, loosely, and passed it back to Trakon. “Do you think we should tie it to Sylas?” Dax asked him. “No,” the older man answered after a moment of thought, “he can navigate the Myste easily, so I doubt he will have any trouble finding us.” Dax nodded understanding and turned back to ‘Thira. “If you feel a sharp tug it means we need to huddle up again. This fog is so dense we may not always be able to hear each other.”

‘Thira dipped her head in understanding, turned, and once again began leading the group through the dense fog.

As she led the group deeper into the grey world ‘Thira couldn’t help but notice how everything within the Myste seemed to change, and yet remain the same. The world was always grey, but the shades varied, and sometimes it seemed as if the very air itself were writhing and alive. None of this mattered to her. She saw it, but she didn’t rely solely on her sense of sight so she knew there wasn’t anything to fear.

She also didn’t share Daxon’s concerns about getting lost. Being a dragon, she always knew in which direction she was going, and she knew they were traveling further into the mountains that bordered the land of Darkenfel. She could feel other entities within the Myste watching them, but none had challenged them or even gotten close enough for her to alert the others to their presence, so she simply led their small group further into the thick, grey world. She wasn’t sure what they were looking for, but she didn’t worry about that either, simply knowing with a dragon’s faith that she would know when she found it.

After traveling for a few hours with nothing to look at other than the barren, grey nothingness surrounding them, she began to notice a slight change in Trakon. To her, Trakon was a human who always seemed grounded in the earth, which is how she had realized he had some amount of control over earth magic. She could feel it surrounding his body, a slight thrumming sound that he always seemed to emulate.

Now, as they journeyed, she could still hear the thrumming, but it was different somehow, slightly off-key and not quite the same as it had been before. She listened closely, trying to decipher exactly what was different before coming to the conclusion that the sound was “enhanced” rather than “different.” The Myste seemed to be joining with Trakon’s earth magic and producing a slightly altered pitch.

She used her dragon sense to feel for Sylas and found him walking beside Trakon. Reassured that he was keeping an eye on the old dragonrider, she continued leading the small group deeper into the abyss.

Dax kept walking, methodically putting one foot in front of the other. The complete lack of anything in this twilight world made the trek boring and monotonous. He kept his eyes focused on ‘Thira’s tail in front of him, gently swaying back and forth as she led them forward, her colorful spine spikes the only thing that didn’t blend in to their surroundings.

Daxon soon tired of watching ‘Thira’s tail swish slowly back and forth, but there was nothing else to look at, so he started daydreaming and thinking back to the day Drakthira’s mother had dropped from the sky and charged him with taking care of her egg. He remembered how hope had flared and he had thought he might finally become a dragonrider, and not just any dragonrider, but the only dragonrider with a colorful wild dragon. He chuckled and shook his head wryly. How quickly things change, he thought to himself.

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