Introduction

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.

Chapter One

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.

He was on a journey that, if successful, could mean the downfall of all dragonriders, especially if what Trakon believed was true and there were dragons trapped within the Dragon Orb that held the rider’s dragons in thrall. If they could manage to destroy the Orb, and essentially break the hold it had over the ‘tame’ dragons, they could very well revert back to their natural wild state and want nothing to do with their riders. Daxon hoped this wouldn’t be the case for all the dragons in Goldenspine, but he couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. He thought of Roila and Obrin and how sad they would be if their companions turned on them, or simply flew away, never to return.

Obrin and Roila are good people, ‘Thira said. I don’t think Balasta or Rylik would turn on them. I don’t know if they will fly away, but I do know that dragons were never meant to be slaves, which is essentially what they have become. They deserve the chance to choose, like I did with you.

Dax flushed with pride at ‘Thira’s words. Other than Trakon, he was the only person he knew of that had actually been chosen by a dragon not under the influence of the Orb. He and ‘Thira had a true friendship, based on mutual affection and trust, not something forced on them. He agreed with everything ‘Thira said, and although he hoped with all his heart that at least some of the dragons would choose to stay with their riders, it didn’t change his mind about the Orb. It had to be destroyed. Whether the dragons chose to stay or leave, it would be their choice and they would be able to live out the rest of their lives however they chose.

Sylas plunged into the Myste fearlessly. After all, being a creature of the Myste he wasn’t afraid of what he might find within, he already knew. Most of the time the Myste was empty, completely devoid of any sort of life, but occasionally, it formed itself into something more solid to deter travelers from coming through from other worlds, or to protect other worlds from the inhabitants of Darkenfel. That was, after all, its job, its reason for existing, had been Sylas’ reason for existing once upon a time. Before he met Trakon.

The first time Trakon had seen Sylas he immediately turned to run the other way, but Sylas had simply dispersed and reformed in front of him. Before he could much more than take on solid form, Trakon had thrust forth his arm, hand open, and called forth a green blast of earth magic that had hit Sylas and somehow made his form more solid. It hadn’t hurt, had, in fact, made Sylas feel more permanent, more alive, and left him wanting more, which Trakon unwittingly obliged. After a few more doses of magic, Sylas had taken his first breath, had needed to take a breath, in fact, something he had never experienced in his brief existence, and it was exhilarating.

From that moment he had actually felt something; a deep, deep gratitude to the old man he later came to know as Trakon, for making him a living, breathing creature and not just a figment of the Myste’s imagination, a figment that would have been dispersed and forgotten as soon as the threat it was formed to take care of had been erased. After he had convinced Trakon he meant him no harm, which was no small feat in itself, they had become almost inseparable. Over time they had learned he could leave the Myste completely and didn’t have to linger on the edge, although he had to return within a week or he started to feel like he was coming apart. They had found out together that the earth magic that now resided within him had forged with the Myste and allowed him to become the deadly green flesh-eating fog that had eaten Dax’s arm, and that it could also heal.

Now he walked along beside Trakon, unseen by the rest of the party except for his slightly glowing green eyes. He watched with interest as the Myste found Trakon’s earth magic and began to feed on it, twisting it this way and that in an effort to draw it out. He whined, softly, the sound smothered as soon as it left his throat by the thick, grey abyss, and no one in the party heard his silent warning.

Trakon whirled around, sure he had felt something touch his shoulder, only to find nothing there. He didn’t know how long he had been walking in this dull, grey, shifting world, but it felt like a lifetime. Everywhere he looked all he saw was grey, and no matter how hard he strained, there was nothing to be heard. Vaguely he remembered entering this place with a large, grey dog and someone else, but he couldn’t remember who. They were probably dead now, anyway, he thought. Not him though. He never died. He couldn’t remember why he didn’t die, but there was something holding him to this life, something he could still feel even after all this time; a distant plea, a soft whisper for help.

He dropped his hand to his side and immediately felt a warm, soft tongue lick his fingers. In an instant it all came back to him and he dug his fingers into Sylas’ fur, trying to maintain his grip on reality. Ever since they had entered the Myste with Daxon and Drakthira he had been losing his mind a little at a time. Each time he had been brought back to reality by Sylas, but it lasted for only a short period.

He tried to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and maintaining physical contact with Sylas, but inevitably, something seemed to trip him from within the Myste, and as soon as his hand lost contact with the big dog’s fur, his mind once again wandered.

He found himself back with Rakisa, her beautiful blue scales shining in the sun as she flew with him over Darkenfel. This is why I can’t die, he thought to himself as they soared above the clouds, because Rakisa still needs me.

He pushed the thought out of his mind, not understanding where it had come from. Rakisa obviously didn’t need him, she was right here with him and they were flying as they always did. She dipped beneath the clouds and began to spiral towards the ground, slowly and lazily. Just before they touched down, Trakon saw Jessa come running towards them, a big smile on her lips, her eyes shining with excitement. “I found it!” she said, breathless.

“Found what?” Trakon asked, reaching out to embrace her. She smelled so good, just like she always had, like sunshine and fresh clover. He held her close to him, breathing in her scent, and a small tear escaped from his eye and trickled down his cheek. He brushed it away, quickly, surprised that he was crying when he was so happy. He looked at the tear clinging to his finger, saw the sun shining through it, the rays breaking apart inside to come out in a small rainbow of colors so bright he could only call them…

“…True colors,” he whispered, closing his eyes tight. A tiny voice in the back of his mind was screaming at him, warning him, but he didn’t want to let go of Jessa, didn’t want to lose her again. Without opening his eyes he felt the darkness gather around him and he heard her laughing, not in joy or jest, but maliciously, as he had heard her laugh once before, a long time ago. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and took a step back.

Jessa stood before him, but not as he remembered her. Her face was twisted in a snarl of victory and in her hand she held a staff with a brightly glowing yellow orb. She walked past him, and when he turned to see what she was doing, he found her standing over Rakisa, brandishing the staff and chanting huskily. As he watched, the orb began to leech the very color out of his dragon friend, until all that was left were translucent scales. From where he stood he could see the blood running through her veins, her massive heart pumping it strongly from one end of her body to the other.

With all of her color gone, Rakisa roared in protest and tried to lunge at Jessa, but the staff wasn’t through with her. Now that her color was gone the staff began to absorb her very being. It looked like an invisible hand reached out and grabbed Rakisa by the tail, pulling her into the orb which was swirling faster and faster. Trakon watched, helpless, as she was dragged inch by inch into the Orb that was now a frenzy of blue and yellow, the colors churning so fast they blurred into a brilliant green.

Just before Rakisa was pulled completely into the staff, she turned her head and looked at him, her eyes wide with fear. Free me!, she roared, her claws scrabbling, digging up huge tufts of earth as she tried to get free, before finally disappearing completely into the Orb.

Once Rakisa disappeared, Trakon’s feet unglued themselves from the ground. He ran at Jessa and tried to wrest the staff from her grip. “Let her go!” he shouted, still trying to wrap his mind around what she had done. This was not the Jessa he had known, but instead a warped, hateful shadow of the woman she had been, the woman he had spent many nights with, walking and holding hands, talking about their dreams and where they were from, making love under the light of Darkenfel’s six moons.

Looking into her eyes he realized that woman he had known was gone, had been transformed by jealousy into this creature before him, this thing that had somehow figured out how to trap dragons and bend them to her will. He struggled harder for the staff, desperation lending him strength. Just as he thought he might get it from her, a large yellow and green dragon landed behind him and roared in defiance. He turned slightly to the side so he could see the dragon out of the corner of his eye, but he refused to let go of the staff.

Trakon gave a final heave, his feet planted firmly on the ground, and for just an instant Jessa lost her grip on the staff. In that split second, a voice in his head begged, Kill her. Free us. He whipped his head in the direction of the yellow dragon and saw sadness and confusion, as well as a determination in its eyes. It took a step towards Jessa, taking a deep breath to stoke its internal fire.

Jessa had stopped laughing the moment the staff left her hand. Quick as a fox she leaped forward and grabbed the staff again, and Trakon heard her chant something under her breath. When he looked back at the yellow dragon, its eyes burning with hatred and rage, he knew it was once more under her control. Instead of blowing fire that would have burned both him and Jessa to a crisp, the dragon swiped at him with its foreleg, a claw catching his robe and tripping him, the staff slipping from his fingers as he fell.

He landed hard on his side, but quickly regained his balance and began to run as fast as his legs would carry him. He was no match for a dragon. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw the yellow dragon take flight after him just as he felt a warm, wet substance on his fingers. Glancing down to see what it was, he saw Sylas dancing around and barking excitedly, staring at something off to his left.

Realizing he had drifted off again and that he was still in the Myste, he looked to his left and saw Daxon and Drakthira facing off against a large yellow and green dragon.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.08.2015

Alle Rechte vorbehalten