Fear and determination boiled within Snow. Through winter’s arctic air, she and Stormfyre zinged, a spear aimed straight at that snowy whirlwind. Unlike all those other Pyrembri dragon riders, she leaned into the glacial gusts slicing into her. They restored, recharged, revived her. They unleashed life itself.
Around Snow’s legs and stomach, Stormfyre’s searing warmth curled. Despite the danger, Snow reveled in it, in winter’s cold splashing over her face and in the dragon’s promise of summer’s swelter washing over her thighs and torso. Through those, a trace of spring weaved, and Snow adored all of it, adored every season, yet another bit of her personality that separated her from the summer-craving riders of the rest of the Guard.
Focus. Plummeting toward that evil frostnado with the frosty gales howling past her and cutting into her, Snow flattened herself against Stormfyre’s withers and neck. Iridescent ripples of heat blanketed her, as did the reek of sulfur. Stormfyre’s magical flames now filled the dragon’s belly. Snow breathed that stench in, and her tongue prickled with the taste of it.
The fire within consumed that sulfurous taste and smell. Her regular dragon rider magic—regular but plenty strong—leapt and climbed up her insides. It filled her own belly with energy and warmth.
It filled her with the desire to burn.
On the plain abutting Shadowmist Woods, the frostnado with all that ice magic grew. It breached the tops of many of the woodland evergreens, probably close to a hundred feet tall. The sky darkened around it, so much of the afternoon sunlight did the frostnado absorb, and the outer walls of that icy tornado became a shade of white that sought to blind.
As trained, Snow glued her gaze to the clumps of snow outlining the purple-brown, dormant grass of the prairie, about twenty feet to the right of the frostnado. She kept the frostnado in her peripheral vision.
Only the strongest frostnadoes sought to blind their victims.
Doesn’t matter. I’ll kill this wyvern, I’ll kill its powerful rider, and I’ll earn my place. I will.
I have to.
Doubt seeped into her. The power she had, but what about the will? The rest of the Guard was right. She’d never killed anything but mosquitoes before.
I will. I must.
The doubt pivoted. Would killing this wyvern and its rider be enough for the Guard?
It doesn’t matter. It will be enough for me. Snow would know she was fit, that she wasn’t a disappointment to her dead parents even if she stayed in the back of the Guard for the rest of her days, however short or long they might be.
Between Snow’s knees, Stormfyre’s ribs jerked out. Heat blazed through Snow’s fur-lined pants. The dragon was ready.
Stormfyre angled her head the slightest bit toward Snow and one enormous silver-blue eye met the dragon rider. One eager enormous silver-blue eye. “Fire?”
The corners of Snow’s mouth twitched toward a smile. Regardless of her feelings about killing, this part she loved. She crouched even lower over the base of Stormfyre’s snakelike neck, and her gloves glided over the silk of Stormfyre’s purplish scales. She was ready too. “Fire.”
The dragon took a great inhale, and Stormfyre’s abdomen pressed against Snow’s legs even more. In the sky maybe half a human body’s length away from the upper edge of that snowy tornado—and with that snowy tornado’s squalls pushing and shoving them away—Stormfyre heaved.
A plume of yellow-orange fire burst out of the dragon’s maw, crackling and cackling, and Stormfyre snapped her wings out.
With Snow pancaked against Stormfyre’s neck and back, dragon and rider zoomed up into the embrace of the cold, crisp winter sky. The polar wind bellowed as they rushed by, and it further drove Snow into Stormfyre.
Half a dragon’s length above that malevolent tornado, their flight straightened to a soar. As they practiced, Stormfyre had opened the soiree with a medium-heat spray to assess their opponent.
Below them, Stormfyre’s laughing flames crashed into the frostnado.
The frostnado swallowed those laughing flames like it had the afternoon sunlight.
From the frostnado, nine spears of ice shot.
They tore through the sky. They flew faster and higher than normal.
They looked sharper and stronger too.
Son of a wyvern.
Stormfyre whirled to the right to evade the spears. Using only her legs to grip the dragon—well, those and the sticky saddle Stormfyre’s scales created for her chosen rider—Snow yanked her gloves off, stuffed them into the pocket of her cloak beside her book, and thrust her hands out. Shimmering heat smelling of autumn’s bonfires erupted from her.
It engulfed those sword-sharp spears of ice glittering in the weak light of a late winter's afternoon.
It melted those spears.
All except one. That spear emerged victorious from the cloud of former ice-spears now raining down on the prairie below.
The remaining spear followed Snow and Stormfyre through the beautiful cerulean sky. Somehow, it mimicked the dragon’s darts, twists, and spins.
Stormfyre arced and veered into and spiraled through that cloud from earlier. Yet again, the dragon tried to throw the spear off their trail. Bitter, bone-chilling gales smashed into Snow and the world twirled around her, but she tugged on that fiery dragon rider magic and whipped her hands out again. Heat exploded out of her.
The spear swung to the side. It dodged her blast.
Snow crushed more heat into the air between them and the spear, until the air turned wavy and formed a translucent barrier of sorts that cracked and popped, almost like a baby version of the Beloved Breath.
She was too slow and the spear too determined.
It zipped above her barrier, then plunged down.
It stabbed into and through her thigh.
It pierced the mighty dragon’s mighty rib cage.
***
Snow just got stabbed by an ice-spear! 😱 What do you think she'll do next?
- Pull it out despite the pain
- Let Stormfyre handle it with dragon fire
- Use her own fire magic to melt the spear
- Something else (tell me what!)
Comment below with your pick!