The morning of the attack was cold.
The temperature had dropped in the blink of eye. One moment it was sweltering, and the next I was putting two shirts under my uniform just so I wouldn’t shiver. They had told us of the erratic weather in Vadhzo, but nothing could have prepared me for just how drastic the changes were.
Is it too cold for you? I asked Ignimitra while I stowed my tent away in her saddlebag. She bared her teeth at me, seemingly amused by my question.
No, my body gets warmer the colder it is outside.
Will it make your fire breath hotter? I mounted her a few heartbeats later and could feel that she was right. Heat radiated from her hide.
I’m not entirely sure. I have never been this cold before. It was a novel thought, but there was no fire hot enough to deter the Earth Dragons we were about to face.
Above us, the sky had grown bleak, blocking out the bright moonlight of just a few hours before. My eyes had mostly adjusted to the low visibility, but I would need to see better if this mission was to be successful.
Responding to my thoughts, Ignimitra shared her power with me. There was a slight pop behind my eyes, then the world changed into a crisper picture. The usual sepia coloring was gone, this time it remained true to color.
What changed? I asked her.
She seemed unsure. Can you not see?
I nodded. Yes, but usually I see it…differently.
Ignimitra thought it over for a while, then said, maybe our Fusion Bond is strengthening. Nothing changed for me.
I didn’t have much time to ponder it, for Vulknor called us to attention then. Our dragons were standing in a disjointed semi-circle, with Aresa facing the five of us. Was it Ignimitra’s eyesight that made it so obvious that there was something wrong with her?
Aresa’s muscles had grown even more. They bulged so big that her hide looked like it was stretched to its limit to accommodate them. Her eyes were so bright they glowed, and a constant stream of saliva drained from her mouth.
Vulknor wore the same wild look in his eyes.
She reeks of the serum, Ignimitra said. They all do.
Tornado’s—Lyle’s dragon—usually grey scales were now tinged green. He had a similar set of unbelievable muscles, and his claws seemed to have grown longer by at least a foot. There was an air of restlessness about him, for Lyle had to be tugging his reins every other minute to keep him still.
Out of the three enhanced dragons, Egann’s dragon Herata looked the fiercest. She was a Giantwing, which meant that she was already huge. But now, she seemed to have grown in size—bigger than even Titan, who was supposed to be larger since he was the male of the species. Her muscles were enormous. Her wheat colored scales remained the same, but the umber stripes that had speckled her back were now fading into green.
I was uneasy. Yet, the only thing I could do was hope this mission ended quickly.
“Today we leave Vadhzo in ashes!” He shouted, raising his arm in triumph.
I didn’t join in their hoots of celebration, neither did Solra and Irikai. This was a mission, not a party. We were on our way to wipe a town off the map. That wasn’t something to celebrate, regardless of what they had done to us.
After refreshing ourselves of the plan, we took off.
Team 17 went east, and we flew west.
Zelkor was at the apex of our formation, since Titan and Ignimitra had the heaviest firepower. Whatever he missed wouldn’t be able to escape us.
ARE YOU READY, ANGEL? I asked Ignimitra when the town came into view. We were just a minute out, and in the distance, I could see Team 17 approaching at a breakneck speed. We were just a few seconds ahead of them, since they had stopped to blow the dam.
As ready as I’ll ever be, she responded.
She was calmer than I expected for a task this important, and that made me happy. If I tried hard enough, I could tap into those feelings for my own piece of mind.
The next minute, we were over the town.
Vadhzo was asleep as Vulknor had predicted, and true to his description the structures were made of wood—the perfect kindling. It was a shaped like a crescent with the lazy river gurgling through its center.
Yet, the more I looked down at the town below, the less it looked like what Vulknor had described. There were no sleeping dragons by the river, only fields. There was nothing that looked like a training facility for soldiers, only houses. Small houses. Family houses. There were lines strewn with clothes and languid smoke climbing into the skies from chimneys.
It was the first plume of fire from Zelkor hit that I knew something was wrong.
The swatch of land went up in flames instantly, and in the next moment people were running out of their houses. Ignimitra and Titan’s fireballs didn’t let them get far.
My throat went dry as more people started leaving the buildings.
They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t even soldiers in training.
The huge orange fires illuminated the faces of children and their mothers. Boys and girls barely old enough to walk, clinging to the bare legs of their terrified mothers. Some had babies slung over their hips, others tried desperately to save livestock. A few people tossed themselves in the river, trying to stop the fire from eating them alive. But there was only mud there, thanks to us.
“STOP!” I screamed as loud as I could. Ignimitra came to an abrupt stop, but the sound of the fire and the screams from belong drowned out my voice.
This isn’t a military training ground! I shouted to Ignimitra, she seemed put off by my words, but spent a second to look down below us.
I see no soldiers, she confirmed, and confusion clouded her thoughts, until it seemed like she understood what I was trying to say.
The next moment she was darting towards Zelkor, trying to get him to stop his attack. Her frantic movements caused a commotion, and Titan almost collided with us. It was too noisy to talk to Solra or Irikai.
I told them that this is a village of civilians, Ignimitra said. I watched as the two dragons and their tamers craned their necks to look at what was happening below us. By this, Team 17 had arrived and they were raining down flames on the town.
What are they saying? I asked urgently, the screams from below were getting so loud it was hard for me to think about anything other than the fact that we were responsible for the suffering of these people.
That we must stop them, Ignimitra said.
Ignimitra dived towards the city, narrowly avoiding a stream of fire from Herata. Half of the city was already engulfed in fire and smoke, while the other half was trying to flee. Even from this distance, I could clearly see the terrified faces below us.
Yet when Ignimitra tried to stop Herata, the dragon pushed past her, continuing on its fiery rampage.
I can’t talk to her, Ignimitra’s voice was frantic. I’m talking but she won’t respond. All I can feel is her desire to destroy the village.
Zelkor and Titan seemed to be coming up short as well, for Aresa and Tornado didn’t tarry following their rebukes. If anything, it fueled their rampage.
I caught a glimpse of Vulknor, his eyes aflame as he looked down at the burning town below us. He wore a look of untainted joy. I had never seen him with a smile so wide. He was enjoying this, and it made me sick to my stomach. There was nothing I could do to stop them.
Our trio of dragons hovered above the down, powerless.
Everything was up in smoke in just a few minutes. The screams had ceased, replaced with the crackling of a hungry fire. Team 17 circled the flames looking for survivors.
For the second time in two weeks, I was helpless to what was unfolding before my eyes. Numbness gripped every inch of my body.
It felt like I was trapped in a bad dream.
We had just burned down an entire town of civilians. Women and children. I hadn’t even seen a man. The people who died here weren’t a threat to us.
Blinking back the tears that were forming in my eyes, I sunk my teeth into my lips. My mind was a mess, my body short-circuiting from everything I was feeling.
What had we done?
THE FLIGHT BACK TO Tartaris was torturous.
Cold air reached its icy tentacles into my clothes, sending shivers up my spine. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. Every time I closed my eyes to fend off the frigid temperatures and stop my teeth from clattering, I saw the terrified faces of the townsfolk in Vadhzo.
We had murdered them.
It didn’t matter that they were Terragians, or even that their countrymen had attacked the Academy. Those people had nothing to do with what had happened.
There wasn’t a grown man in the town, let alone a dragon tamer.
I conjured up images of the village I had lived in with Hakan. If the Rebels though to attack them, they would be powerless. Civilians couldn’t protect themselves from dragons. The hair on my neck stood on end.
It was unfair.
Inhuman.
And because I hadn’t stopped the attack, I was now complicit.
All of a sudden, my skin was burning despite the falling temperature.
Why had Vulknor lied about what he had seen in Vadhzo?
He is the Headmaster’s son. Isn’t that how he gets us to do what he wants?
Ignimitra’s voice made my anger falter, just enough to consider what she was saying. She was right, but there was just something about Vulknor’s lie that made this all seem worse. Or was it because I was responsible too?
I wish I had known, I thought.
I wish I had led the mission like Commander Gavrok had asked.
Would you have done things differently? Up until this point, I couldn’t pick up on what Ignimitra was feeling, and her questions didn’t make it any clearer.
Yes! My answer came quickly. I wouldn’t have attacked a village of innocents.
If Vulknor had come back with the same report, you wouldn’t have known until it was too late.
I would’ve sent Irikai and Egann, not Vulknor and Lyle.
And then what would you say to the Commander when you refused to do what they asked of you.
They couldn’t possible have wanted us to…
My train of thought ended abruptly when I realized what Ignimitra was saying.
They had wanted us to burn Vadhzo all along.
But why? It was painful to even consider it.
I do not know the answer to that, Ignimitra said simply. What she felt was still behind the wall that she had erected, and I didn’t feel like trying to break it down. Not when my own feelings were already too heavy to carry.
The guilt felt like it was suffocating me.
WE LANDED ON TARTARIS’ southeastern shore two and half days later.
We were tired and spent from the nonstop flight, my belly ached from hunger and my limbs were heavy. But my mind was unchanged, the fire burning in the pit of my chest unquenched.
I needed some form of reprieve.
I needed answers.
As soon as we were safely on the ground, I hopped off of Ignimitra and stormed towards Aresa, my sword drawn.
Kaos! Her voice was loud in my head, but I ignored.
Vulknor hadn’t alighted yet. He looked down at me, that disgusting smile still on his face. There wasn’t even a wrinkle of tiredness behind those soulless eyes. Instead, he looked more alive than ever. Looking at him only poured gas on the fire raging within me.
“You lied!” I shouted up to him, my fist balled.
Vulknor’s laugh was hollow, mocking. He seemed genuinely amused by my accusation and alighted Aresa in a single hop. Even she seemed interested in me, turning her huge head to face me with those bright green eyes.
I should’ve been scared.
Here I was, on the shore of the Dragon Guard barracks, standing close enough that Aresa in all her enhanced glory could swallow me in a single bite, brandishing a sword at the Headmaster’s son no less. But none of that mattered.
Nothing I felt could compare to the moments when I realized that we had destroyed a village full of innocents.
“Something wrong?” Vulknor said, grinning.
By this we had attracted the attention of our teams.
Zelkor and Titan were behind me, Tornado and Herata behind him. I had no doubt that Solra and Irikai felt the same way I did. Only they were doing a better job of hiding their feelings.
“You lied about Vadhzo!” I screamed at him, raising my sword.
Aresa snorted a rancid plume of ash in my direction, a growl rising in her throat.
I half expected a rebuke from Ignimitra, but I felt her presence behind me in the next second, swiftly crossing the space between us. She planted herself between Aresa and I, staring down the dragon with an equally fierce expression.
“I did what I had to do,” Vulknor snapped, suddenly looking like a man enraged. “You soft-hearted imbeciles didn’t have what it took.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of me and my team.
“What you had to do?” I said in a low tone. “You lied so we would go along with a plan to murder a town full of innocents?” My voice was shaking now, and it was taking every inch of my resolve not to attack him, to show him what those villagers felt in their last moments.
“Innocents?” Vulknor held his belly and laughed. “They were the wives and children of the very soldiers who massacred us on the Isle of Un!” He shouted. “Those babies would have grown into soldiers too, soldiers who would kill our children.”
His words sent a shiver down my spine.
“This is war!” He roared. “W-A-R.”
I was shocked silent, but I found my voice eventually.
“You and I will have our day,” I said quietly. “And when we do, know that it will just be the cost of war.”
I turned away from him, blocking my ears from anything he had to say.
My hands felt numb. My legs felt numb. My heart felt numb. Everything was throbbing with the crushing weight of a realization that I couldn’t even bare to think about. But I had to.
Instead of mounting Ignimitra, I walked towards the sea.
Kaos, are you okay? Her voiced was tinged with concern.
I nodded in her direction. Go home and get some sleep, angel. You’re tired. I’ll be there soon. She wanted to protest my request, but the ache in her bones was too much to ignore. I heard her leave a short while after.
“Kaos!” It was Solra’s voice.
The choppy sea lapped my ankles, and I crouched down to scoop up a handful of wet sand and watched it slip through my fingers. I recognized Solra’s boots standing beside me the next minute.
Irikai’s appeared on the other side.
Then they were crouching down beside me, sifting through the wet sand too.
“I can’t believe he lied to us like that,” Solra was the first to break the silence, muttering under her breath when we had been like that for a while.
Irikai huffed. “It’s disgusting.”
“It was genocide,” I finally found my voice. The sentence felt white hot in my mouth, burning my throat and tongue just to speak it. “They used us to get rid of families. People whose only mistake was marrying a soldier. Or being born to one.”
The sobering reality hung in the air between us.
“If that was our mission,” I continued, “What are the other ones like?”
“Isn’t this what war is, though?” Solra ventured to ask. I met her eyes. They were full of that naive innocence that had her trusting the Headmaster during our first few weeks here. “They would have done the same to us.”
“Yet as far as I know, they haven’t,” I said. “Something feels off about this, about what we’re doing.” Then I finally said the words that I had been thinking about for so long. “And I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. I need to find the truth.”
Irikai hurled a chunk of wet sand out into the ocean. “I feel the same way,” he said. “Today we’re setting a town on fire, tomorrow it will be an entire province.”
The idea struck me like a bolt of lightning, appearing so suddenly in my mind that I almost fell face-first into the ocean.
“The book…” I said softly. “The book that Commander Gavrok used to assign us this mission.”
“What about it?” Solra asked.
I glanced at Irikai, seeing the recognition coming alive in his eyes. I leaned in closer just to be safe. “The book has information about our mission. If we get a hold of it, we can know what they have planned. We’ll know if they planned for us to destroy a civilian village all along.” It was a shot in the dark.
I sucked in a breath, waiting for their response.
Irikai was the first to stand.
“I’m in,” he said, holding out his hand. “We need to know.”
I rose, putting mine on top of his. “Good.”
Solra stood and shrugged. “I’m in too.” Her hand completed the pile.
I didn’t even have the slightest clue of how we would get our hands on the book. But things couldn’t continue like this, and this was the first step to any kind of change.
