Ignimitra set us down in the thick of the devastation.
Around us, soldiers and dragons were working to find the trapped. I avoided their gaze, feeling self-conscious about how clean I was. Everyone looked like they had been through the worst—dust coated their clothes and matted their hair, some even had injuries.
But they didn’t seem concerned about us. In fact, nobody even looked our way.
From the roofs and strewn brick, I realized that we were standing in what used to be the Artisan District. At this time of the day, the streets would have been alive with children and adults alike. The smell of food and metal work would have been high on the air. My throat worked when I considered that just a few months ago, Betheka would have been living here too.
Now, all of that was gone. Replaced with an active disaster zone.
As Ignimitra and I got to work on the collapsed building closet to us, it crossed my mind that maybe it had been a good thing that Betheka had passed when she did. At least she got to die on her own terms. Suffocating under a collapsed building didn’t fit her personality. Though nobody deserved to die like that, she especially didn’t.
Lend me your strength, angel. I had been working to move a boulder for a while. It wouldn’t budge. In the time I had been struggling with it, Ignimitra had crushed three with her powerful jaws.
A light chuckle escaped her as she obliged me. The bite of strength warmed my arms and legs. Afterward, moving the boulder was like tossing a pebble. I picked it up with a single hand, even though it must have weighed hundreds of pounds.
With our Fusion Bond, we made quick work of the building. It was probably a pub or inn, judging from all the splintered wood and crushed glass. It was when I spied a mangled sign in the rubble that I was sure—this was a popular spot for soldiers who wanted an early morning drink. Thankfully, it had been empty. If the Rebels had attacked even an hour later, things would have gone much differently.
We moved on to the next pile of rubble. This one was right beside the inn, and if my memory served me correctly it should have been a house.
Moments after Ignimitra lifted off a huge chunk of the twisted metal, her eyes snapped toward mine frantically. My stomach fell.
There’s someone under it! She shouted, using her mouth to crush one of the boulders in the way. Her pronouncement lit a fire in me too, and I started pushing the boulders away as fast as I could. We picked off rock after rock, fragment after fragment until the person came into view.
They were sandwiched between two huge pillars of stone, and the earth painted with their life. I swallowed back the bile that the sight of it caused.
It was a soldier, the gray of his Dragon Guard uniform the same as mine. I took a tentative step towards him, my heart thrumming uncertainly in my chest. Even though his body was bruised and swollen he looked so familiar. The tawny skin, the golden hair.
Then I caught a glimpse of the scar on his neck.
The scar I had given him.
This soldier was from my Advanced Training class.
Recognition energized me, and I released a breath that I didn’t realize I had been holding. Ignimitra and I worked in tandem to free him. As soon as she had removed the last piece of rock pinning him down, I moved to pick him up.
“Leave me,” he said, his voice was barely a whisper. “I’m dying.”
My eyes snapped to his, wide with a cornucopia of conflicting feelings. As much as I wanted to persuade him otherwise, I could tell that he was right. Death was no stranger to me, and his demise was obvious—the life was draining from him. His dark eyes were already cloudy.
“No, I can still take you to the infirmary,” I said quickly, wedging my hand under his body. The evidence was in front of me, but I didn’t want to believe him. His limbs were limp, his head lolling to the side. I wasn’t sure if I was doing more harm than good, and I desperately wanted to do something good.
He heaved a ragged breath. “Help…” I had to crane my neck to hear him. “Help someone else…newt.” Another ragged breath.
Despite his wishes, I hooked my hands under the back of his knees and picked him up. I had barely taken two steps towards Ignimitra when her eyes confirmed what I already knew but didn’t want to admit ton myself.
My eyes burned, but not from the sooty air.
He’s gone, Kaos. Her voice was glum.
The tears fell from my eyes.
I looked down at him, realizing for the first time that I didn’t even remember his name. A couple months ago, we had been sparring in preparation for this very moment. I had beat him in that spar, yet here he was—dead. My cowardice had kept me alive, while his bravery had killed him. I sucked in a breath the still the uneasiness that was spreading through my limbs.
Ignimitra called my attention to people laid in the street, a short distance from where we stood. Dead people, I realized. They were piling all the causalities together like logs for kindling. My stomach churned at the sight of it.
Putting him there was the least I could do.
I approached cautiously and set him down gently. It felt like I was trapped in a bad dream. I had felt the heat leave his body, seen the life drain out of his eyes. And now, here I was placing his body beside probably a dozen people who had the same fate.
There was no mourning for them. No reflection on their life. Nobody would take their ashes to see and scatter them like I had done for my grandmother. Just my piteous tears and the sense of foreboding in the air. Everybody around us was focused on preserving whatever lives remained in the rubble.
In a split second, everything had changed. This was what war was like. The preservation of life before all else. Valiance, even in the face of death. And everyone who had set foot on this mountain seemed to have a clear understanding of that—everyone except me.
Glancing down at my clothes, I felt my stomach contort. I hadn’t eaten before our early morning flight, and I was glad for it. Otherwise, I would have lost my breakfast by now. His life had spilled all over my hands and my uniform.
A tinge of guilt and sadness filled me at the sight of it. For all my bravado the past few years—I had been squaring off with Royal Militia soldiers and anyone who dared cross me even before I ended up at the Academy—there was something distinctly different about what was happening. For the first time, the sight of death was eliciting an entirely new feeling from me, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. Was it because there was so much of it? Was it because that these deaths were a harbinger for a great retaliation from the Headmaster that would result in even more of this? I had no idea.
But there was no time to ruminate on whatever it was that was changing.
There was something I could do; we could do now. I had to be strong. Strong enough to face the reality of what was happening. So, I gritted my teeth and took a longer look at the bodies. If I was going to get over this, I would have to take it all in.
Not all of them were soldiers. The shopkeeper that I had bought my last set of eggs from was there, his head twisted at an odd angle and half of his body crushed. There was a child there too, though I couldn’t place his face because it was missing. It was a harrowing sight to look at—these were people that I interacted with, people that I had rubbed shoulders with up to last night. Now they were gone.
But none of them were the people that I loved, and as horrible as it made me feel to think it, I was relieved. I could hold on to my hope just a little longer. It would keep me going. It had to.
Let’s go see if we can find anyone else, I turned to Ignimitra who already had her sights set on another collapsed building a short walk from where we had found the soldier. We were almost there when a familiar voice caught my attention.
“Kaos!” The person said.
Quickly I spun on my heel, searching.
My eyes met a pair of bright green ones.
“CUINN!” MY VOICE SOUNDED more relieved than I wanted it to.
It was a relief to see a familiar face that still had life in it. He walked over to me, wearing a smile despite the destruction all around us. It didn’t reach his eyes, though and as he walked—no, limped—over I noticed just how shaken up he looked.
Cuinn’s red hair was grey from debris, sticking to his temples and matted in other places. His uniform was in tatters, reddened flesh peeking out from the gashes across his chest and arms. Bruises streaked his face and neck, and there was a poorly patched up wound on his thigh. Red was seeping through the gauze already.
“You’re alive,” he said. His smile deepened, lopsided from his swelling lip. A look of relief relaxed his shoulders. I nodded sheepishly, not trusting my voice again.
Ignimitra moved closer to nuzzle him then. I shot her a look, but she didn’t seem to care. Cuinn stroked her snout and said, “I’m glad you’re still here too, Igni.”
Igni? When did that happen? As if reading my expression, he spoke.
“Sorry, isn’t that her nickname?”
I rolled my eyes. With the magnitude of everything happening around us, it seemed almost stupid to be annoyed by something so small, something so inconsequential. I swallowed back my disdain and tried to focus on the good thing. Cuinn was still alive.
The weight of the attack was thick in the air, it felt like a wall between us. I didn’t know what to say to him, how to broach the topic—especially when he had clearly been in the thick of things. I couldn’t let it pass without saying anything.
“I’m glad you made it out,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “I—I was worried that I had lost everyone.” Maybe I should have thought that through a little more. I wasn’t worrying about Cuinn before this.
Cuinn shrugged, his eyes focusing on my face. He rubbed the back of his neck too.
“We barely did,” he said in a low tone. “Phoenix got the worst of it,” he pointed in the direction of the crater. “They’re fixing him up.”
I looked down at my boots, squeezing my eyes tightly. This conversation was already wearing on my nerves.
“Why aren’t you getting fixed up too?” I said quickly, hoping to change the topic.
Cuinn chuckled emptily. “I still have my strength,” he said. “I’d rather leave a cot for somebody who’s dying.” Then he added. “I’m trying to find my teammates.”
“Me too,” I added. “Solra and Irikai,” and Avek too, I wanted to say.
He smiled then, his face softening despite his harsh-looking injuries. “We can do that together.”
I nodded sharply, and he fell into step beside me.
Cuinn’s eyes were on me, I could feel it. But I didn’t want to look at him, afraid of what I’d see in his eyes. Doubt would be there, for sure. The entire Academy was upside down, and here I was in a freshly pressed uniform. It was glaringly obvious.
“This blood isn’t yours…” his voice asked more than his words did. I had almost forgotten that the soldier had bled out on me.
My throat convulsed. “No, it’s from a soldier I helped earlier.” Avek probably knew him too.
“Oh,” his voice trailed off. He spoke again in a heartbeat. “Where were you when—”
“We had gone for an early morning flight,” I cut in. At least that was true. “We ended up farther than I anticipated, and by the time we got back…all of this had already happened.” It sounded believable enough.
He bought it.
“This must be hard for you, then,” he continued. I let out a heavy sigh.
His words burned through the last bit of resistance I had. The waterworks almost surfaced again, but I blinked them away. “It is.” Cuinn seemed eager to listen, but I couldn’t burden him with the truth. The last thing I needed was his disappointment. I already felt guilty about not remembering him.
We walked in silence for the rest of the journey, but my thoughts were loud enough to make up for that. In addition to my new title of Coward, I could add Liar to the list.
You’re being hard on yourself, Ignimitra’s voice was soft, soothing.
Don’t you feel the same way?
Yes. But we can help these people now.
My dragon was the voice of reason, as usual. Her words energized me enough to sharpen my focus to the task at hand. Helping the people who were still alive. We found a network of collapsed buildings soon after. From the look of it, this had been one of the rows of connected houses that some civilians had occupied in the Artisan District.
Cuinn and I worked in tandem to move the stones—he was strong for an injured man without an active Fusion Bond—while Ignimitra worked on the bigger pieces of the building. A flicker of hope had returned. But it was quickly snuffed out when we lifted the last piece of the house.
Two more bodies. A woman and her son.
Today’s going to be long, I said to Ignimitra as Quinn hoisted both their bodies over his shoulders. Very long.
OF THE TEN BUILDINGS Cuinn and I excavated, we only managed to save one person. It was young woman who worked as a dragonhand. Her muffled moans had alerted us to the fact that someone was still alive underneath the rubble. Yet when we got to her, the prognosis was grim.
A heavy stone pillar had fallen on her lower body. I wasn’t sure if she would ever walk again. How could she be a dragon hand without the use of her legs?
She was alive though, and she seemed grateful for that.
“I need a breather,” I said to Cuinn when the tightness in my chest had become unbearable. It was constricting my lungs. I could barely breathe. “Seeing everyone like the this, seeing the Academy like this…” The truth was that I could feel my hope waning, slipping right through my grip.
“We haven’t found our teammates yet.” His voice was even, not even fazed by the carnage around us. He seemed so sure that they would be alive.
“And if we find them buried under a building?” I raised my voice. It shook from everything I was feeling. “What do we do then?” I wanted to scream at him, but my question had as much sting as a mosquito bite.
Cuinn seemed unfazed by my outburst. Instead, he walked over to me and put a hand on each of my shoulders. He was silent for a few moments, just staring at me. He was so calm that I felt bad for shouting at him.
“Then we deal with it. If we find them like that,” he said. “But we haven’t. So, we keep looking.” He brushed an errant strand of hair from my face. “Okay?”
I nodded slowly.
With a hand on my wrist, he yanked me towards another fallen building.
We had barely begun shifting through the stones when Ignimitra’s feelings burst to the forefront of my consciousness. She seemed—happy? Strange, considering what was unfolding around us.
“What is it?” I said to her, but her head was turned skyward, looking around frantically.
Ignimitra let out a screech then. I moved to grab her reins, but she was hopping around excitedly. I raised my eyes to the sky and caught a glimpse of what was making her so excited.
Two dragons were approaching us.
And the sight of them made my heart sing too.
“Solra, Irikai!” I screamed, taking off towards them.
They landed with a thud, just next to Ignimitra. Tears sprang from my eyes and my mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear what I was saying. I couldn’t tell if the happy thoughts were mine or Ignimitra’s. I couldn’t make out where her feelings ended and mine began.
The only thing that I was sure of was that I held my two best friends in my arms.
They were whole.
They were alive.
They were here.
And they were just as happy to see me.
“I thought I lost you!” I exclaimed, squeezing them tight.
“We were worried about you too,” Irikai croaked, his hand squeezing my shoulder. Solra’s arm was around my waist, her face buried in my other shoulder.
“When we didn’t see you anywhere, we thought the worst had happened,” she mumbled, her hot tears seeping into my uniform. Her grip on me tightened.
“We had gone for an early morning flight. This is what we came back to,” telling the lie wasn’t nearly as hard the second time, I realized. “I’m so sorry that we weren’t here to help.” I wasn’t even sure if that was the truth.
When we broke apart, I reached over to pat down Solra’s hair. She had made a poor attempt at taming her wild curls with a hastily tied bandana. She was pink the face. From crying I thought at first. But then looking closer, I realized that her cheeks were peppered with tiny bruises—from an explosion, it seemed.
“If you were here, I don’t think anything would’ve changed,” she muttered. “They caught us off guard. We almost lost.”
I remembered what we had seen from the sea. If the Headmaster hadn’t stepped in when he did…things would have ended much differently. For all the training we got here on the mountain, we had been woefully unprepared for an ambush of that magnitude. Before this, I hadn’t even considered that the Rebels would have enough guts and firepower to attack our base. This ambush revealed just how vulnerable we actually were.
Just then, Cuinn sidled up to our reunion.
He wore a smile, but I knew this must have saddened him a bit. I had found my teammates; he still hadn’t found his. All this while he had been the one full of hope and I had nearly given up. The question on Irikai’s face prompted me to speak.
“Solra and Irikai, this is Cuinn,” I pointed to the redhead. “We have some Advanced Training classes together.” Then I turned to Cuinn, “these are my teammates.”
He greeted them with a smile.
“Nice to meet you, Cuinn,” Solra said.
“Likewise,” Irikai commented. Cuinn seemed satisfied with the introduction.
Before the awkward silence could ensue, I said, “I’m helping Cuinn look for his teammates, and helping the people trapped beneath the buildings while we’re at it.”
“We’ll help,” Solra cast a glance at Zelkor who was being all but smothered by Ignimitra. Our happy reunion had paled in comparison to theirs. Dragons could be affectionate when they wanted to.
“Count us in too,” Irikai said. Titan turned toward him at those words.
“I was thinking we could continue over—” Cuinn pointed to another fallen building, but froze mid-sentence when a shadow appeared overhead.
Instinctively, my hand traveled to my sword. But my grip loosened when I recognized the dragon that was descending towards us.
It was Nurik.
Avek was safe too.
