For the rest of the month, I trained with Devon. I was becoming stronger and faster. The klutz disappeared as my balance heightened.
I climbed to the top of the rope faster each day and even moved with some weapons like the sai and nun-chucks fluently. They didn’t slam against my body like they used to in the beginning. My body still needed an Epsom salt bath twice a week to relieve my muscles from any soreness and Ben still came to heal a blue eye or a banged up lip, but I was getting better. I felt high at the end of the month, ready to face the beast, only to get chuck on the ground when my second trainer showed up. I summed her up pretty wrong as she was as tall as me, had carnival red hair with brown eyes. Her lips were full, and her body sturdily built.
I didn’t know what she was going to teach me, as she didn’t move as fast as Devon.
“Bear, this is Mia. She is actually your Art of War Professor at Dragonia.”
She reached out her hand for me to shake. I grasped it tight. “It’s nice meeting you, Princess. So you are going to tame the big guy, huh?”
“Big guy?” My gaze flickered from Mia to Dad.
She laughed. “It’s what we call him.”
The Rubicon couldn’t be at Dragonia. He wasn’t old enough yet, but then again, he was the Rubicon. He could start his training at an early age.
“I guess it all depends on how well I’m going to get, Professor.”
“Call me Mia.”
“Then please call me Elena.”
Dad and Mia laughed. “I see our beloved Prince of Tith is rubbing off on you, Elena.”
We started our training immediately and my back ached with the amount of times she threw me onto the mat or had me in some sort of death grip.
I would never judge a book by its cover again.
She was super friendly, though, and would giggle every time she reached out her hand and helped me up.
The next few weeks, she taught me how to get out of her grips. It was weird how she started her training with defending myself, getting out of the grips and not teaching me the grips.
We spoke a lot about the Rubicon too. He didn’t have one weakness. That wasn’t great news, but there was a tiny smile lingering on the corner of her lips.
“Well, maybe he has one.”
She got up, and I followed. “Which is?”
“It won’t help you, Elena.”
“Don’t be like that? I need all the help I can get.”
She chuckled. “This one will not do you any good, so forget that I said it, okay?”
“Fine, be that way.” I sighed, and we carried on training.
During my classes, I still struggled with potions and spells. Science became easier, but I struggled with the magic stuff as I didn’t know the language yet. It was so difficult to learn.
I learn a lot about the anatomy of all the dragons, too.
The Night-Villain was an acid breather. They loved swamps, and they smelled like rotten food. I could only imagine. They were scaly and devious. How did my dad claimed one without an ability?
The Moon-Bolt predicted futures, but there weren’t any that could predict my blood line’s future. Accept the dragon on the other side and Fox, who was now dead. They were also amazing trackers and lightning breathers.
Then there was the Sun-Blast. They were red and had an obsession with virgins and gold. Anything of value was like a magnet to them. They breathed a red flame that carried a blue hue.
There was the Green-Vapor that can persuade anything that owned a heartbeat. Tanya was a Green-Vapor, and they could easily take memories away. She backfired with me because she panicked when she tried to take away mine. Some would say she was too close to the project. She loved me too much and took a bit more away than she intended. They also breathed a green fog that they said was as fatal. The fog was similar to chloroform or another type of chloroform as that gas didn’t have a color, but a Green Vapor’s chloroform had. Their scales were green.
Last of the Chromatics were the Snow Dragon. Blake’s dragon was a snow dragon. They were the smallest of all the dragons and breathed a chilling frost that turned everything into ice. They were extremely smart and cunning. Blake’s ability was ice? I would’ve never said that, as I remembered the warmth that came from him when I traveled back to Paegeia.
He was like a furnace. Must be a contradiction thing.
The Metalics were the nobles of the beasties, the good, kind hearted type. Their nature was peaceful, and they didn’t need a rider to keep them good.
The Swallow Annex scales were silver, and they got their name because of their wings that were in the same shape as a swallow. Their ability was healing. Most of Paegeia’s doctors were Swallow Annexes.
The next beasty was a Fin-Tail, and their scales were pure gold. Paegeia deemed them as the wise dragons as they were just as intelligent as the Snow Dragon. Some say even more.
Dad was a Copper-Horn. He refused to show me his form, and I brushed my finger over the picture. Two horns laid on top of his head. He was big, one of the big three dragons, and they loved riddles and theories. Plenty of them went into finance or law.
The fourth dragon was the Fire-Tail. They breathed an orange flame with a red hue. They had big lips with the most beautiful tail that finned out at the end.
The last one was the Crown Tail. They were bronze and they can actually show a person their past with one touch or gain the truth, but they said it was fatal to humans. Only dragons could take that blow.
The last beasty was the alpha, the Rubicon. His scales were a funny purple, red color. He had many tendrils around his neck and on top of his head that looked like snakes. It was his mane and apparently they were very sensitive. Could it be the weakness Mia didn’t want to tell me about? But why would she say that it wouldn’t do me any good? Nothing made sense with this beast.
I remembered him laying in front of the castle that weekend, especially that one night when I looked at him and he looked straight at me.
What had gone through his thoughts? Did he even know it was me?
He was more complicated than the other beasties. He had all their abilities, but they deemed him more Chromatic than Metallic. The Rubicons before him all went dark and almost ended up destroying the world.
They discovered how important humans born with the mark were to the beasties and discovered that the Rubicon must have had a true rider too.
I wished it wasn’t me.
The Bonds and Dent subjects were as complicated as the beasties themselves. They said that a beasty that was part of a Dent would never reveal what strengthened the bond. There was some sort of process that knocked them out for a period, sometimes weeks, and then when they woke up, they had this weird fascination with their rider. They called that The Dent. It smelled like a lot of hocus to me.
Beasties loved deeper and were more in tune with their emotions. They would die for their Dragonian. They wouldn’t be able to survive without their riders and when it was opposites, they always but always ended up together as a couple. But like I previously read, it was a rare finding.
I was looking forward to the essence section, learning all about what happens that makes dragons reach the age of hundreds of years, some even thousands.
To live a thousand years seemed like such a long time. But it was one subject my mind struggled to process. Maybe learning about it would help me understand and processed it faster.
It was one more day than Lucian would come back from Dragonia. He told me last Sunday he was going to introduce me to something wicked that might help me process the beasties better.
I couldn’t wait.
I trained Friday afternoon with Mia; she was a machine. How on earth could she have so much energy?
My legs wobbled as she depleted mine.
An applause came from the door as I was once more on my back.
“Mia, you are relentless.”
“Lucian, me, never.” She reached down for my hand and helped me up.
I showed her the time out sign and she laughed as she handed me a bottle of water.
“Let’s call it a day. Besides, it’s Friday. You need a break.”
“Are you serious? Oh, man, I can kiss you right now.”
She stepped back. “And have the Rubicon on my tail, no thanks.”
“Oh, you would be so lucky, Mia,” Lucian quips.
“Haha,” she mocked Lucian with sarcasm and squinty eyes as she walked to the door. She yelled something in Latin, and Lucian just stared at her.
“What was that about?”
“Nothing for your ears.”
My stomach fluttered as he said that. I couldn’t help thinking that Mia must have thrown something about the Rubicon back in his face.
I walked to my towel that was sitting on the first stone step and wiped my face.
“You are getting better, Elena.”
“I beg the difference. She is really vicious.”
Lucian laughed. “Mia is not by far one of the best. I feel sorry for you if my dad is getting the last tutor on his list.”
“Why? What is wrong with them?”
“Oh, nothing. She is just the best Dragonian in Paegeia. She has sworn her oath to protect the Ancients. They may not claim a dragon, but they handpicked her to be the one to slay the Rubicon if he turned.”
“What?”
“Aren’t you lucky that you exist, Elena?”
“Haha.” I pushed him, and he stumbled slightly to the left, but his balance was perfect. “So what did you want to show me?”
He squinted. “I don’t know if you are ready for this.”
“Just show me.”
“Okay, if you pee in your pants don’t blame me.”
I rolled my eyes and followed him into the castle. I wanted to go for a shower, but Lucian told me not to. This was going to become part of my training.
We reached the North Wing of the castle and down the one dark hallway at the end was a black glass door. He punched in a couple of keys and the door swooped open. We stepped through on a steel ledge that was right in the middle height of an enormous room.
I stepped closer toward Lucian, who stood by the railing and looked down.
Below us, a few floors down, was a green room with some sort of obstacle course with huge green blocks scattered around the room.
“What is this?”
“My simulator. Dad got it for me when I trained to tame the beast.”
My lips curved as he called the Rubicon a beast too.
I followed Lucian down the steel steps. Our footsteps drummed through the metal and eventually we reached the bottom of the stairs. The blocks looked much bigger standing among them than what they were, looking down on them.
He took me to a small room with a high-tech system. The table sat against the gray wall and computers with pads filled with buttons covered the surface. Against the other wall was a silver cage with suits, headgear that had visors and gloves.
He walked to the cage, opened it and grabbed a headgear. Gel pads hung on thin wires. He brought it to me. It almost resembled a helmet with a visor, but it didn’t have a top part. He showed me the gel pads you hooked on the side of your temples. He then put a visor on my head that shifted over my eyes like a pair of goggles.
“What is this?”
“Watch on the screen so you get the idea first, otherwise you might get a heart attack.”
“Sorry?”
I took off the head gear as Lucian’s lips curved.
He was working on a tablet again and on the computer screen appeared all the dragons. They walked around each other, trampling one another.
What was this?
My eyes skidded over the boulders and everything around them, and I slowly realized that they stacked it in the same information as the obstacle blocks.
My eyes flickered from the blocks to the screen as it made sense. “No, no. Is this what I think it is?”
“Oh, yeah.” Lucian’s lips curved, nodding.
“You put that on, and whatever reflects on this screen is happening?”
“It is a simulator, Elena, it doesn’t really happen, but your mind makes it real.”
I put the headgear down. “No.” I walked out of the room.
“Come on, you are doing so well.”
“Not ready yet, Lucian. Sorry,” I yelled as I walked past the obstacles back to the stairs.
Lucian’s laughter reached my ears as he closed the door and ran to catch up with me.
He was insane. I wasn’t ready by far to face any sort of beasty, whether real or some virtual one.
