He couldn’t meet their eyes. Kaden didn’t know what to say. Telling them the modified version of his tale worked so well until the vision. How could he explain it without telling them of the nest and the platform?

He didn’t know if he could trust them. Trusting them should be easy because if a matriarch trusted them enough to bless them, then he should be able to trust them too, and yet he still hesitated. Kaden didn’t know if it was because of the nest itself or if the rune trap weighing heavy on his mind.

Telling them about the nest, letting other magic users know where the dragons were breeding, seemed to be a betrayal of trust. He steeled himself and made the decision to only tell them of the visions.

“I…” he stuttered, the words falling away from him. “I didn’t. Not really. I just… didn’t tell anyone about this.”

Iratoi gave him slow blinks of what he assumed was irritation. “What is this?”

He sighed. “The matriarch was so large. So, so, so large. One of her fangs was the size of a pine tree. She was that large.”

Eloise and Jaxtor shared a surprised yet confused look. He had known the matriarch he met was large, but their reaction implied she truly was larger than what even they were used to.

“When she blessed me, I saw things,” he tried to explain.

“Things?”

Looking at his feet, he continued, “I don’t know what it was. Visions? The future? I don’t know. I didn’t understand everything. Some of it was calm. I saw an older version of myself and Zuma just relaxing next to a river. Then there were other things that were just chaotic and made no sense to me.”

He could see the gears spinning in Iratoi’s head. She took a deep breath and said, “and you just saw one of them again, correct?”

“Yeah,” he rubbed his head, “I can’t control it. I don't know what triggers it. It has only happened a few times now where I’ve seen them again. As you can see, it overwhelms my senses.”

Iratoi wiggled her pursed lips back and forth in thought before saying, “we’ll need to talk with the high priestess about this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing coming from a blessing before.”

“Do you think it’s because of it having been a giant wild matriarch?” asked his brother, Ozmere.

Jaxtor shrugged and said, “that’s possible. We don’t really have people who get blessed in the wilds too often anymore. This is the first I’ve ever heard of since I’ve been part of the Guardians. It’s why we were so excited to come out. We never get to give the speech like this. It’s always so formal normally, given to people’s children they bring to the temples or little lordlings we have to see at some dusty keep.”

“You know,” Eloise looked away, searching her own thoughts, “I don’t think I know of a single person who has been blessed by a wild matriarch. You’re the first I’ve ever met, Kaden!”

His mother came to stand next to him, putting a helping hand on his back. “Please don’t let them dissect his brain or something to figure it out. Promise me that.”

Iratoi let out a snicker and said, “don’t worry, Lady Berkhoff, they would never do such a thing.”

He said his goodbyes to his family not too long after. The guardians weren’t hesitating and headed out as soon as they could. Zuma didn’t bother to walk with them and instead chose to fly above. No one would mess with her. They were an Azure dragon after all. Kaden could feel their presence and they were never too far from them as they traveled.

The three of them were not what he had expected. When he thought of magic users, he thought of some stuffy noble old men. He didn’t think of younger people in their twenties. He felt like he could relate more to them and that they could understand him. Maybe they were sent because they knew he was younger and would be more open to them.

Eloise was full of energy and life. There was so much held in such a small body he didn’t know how she could just keep going on and on. Jaxtor took every opportunity he could to poke fun at her, but it never seemed to truly bother her and they had an amusing banter.

Iratoi was a bit different. She was older than the rest of them and a little more closed off. They amused her though as she would often snicker at the other two when they got to teasing. He wondered if they were regularly together, as their familiarity with one another seemed to be closer than mere coworkers.

Eloise rambled on about the temple, telling him of all the different locations that to her were always dubbed as ‘wondrous’. There was a rune library, a normal library, a historical library, and even a food library.

“That’s literally just the mess hall,” Jaxtor had ribbed.

They told him about all the different places at the temple, the water gardens and even the dragon stables. Eloise explained to him how the stables weren’t really stables, not really. That’s just what they called them. They were more like caves.

She explained to him how, for some reason, the azure dragons like to hang out in watery caves. He chuckled to himself that he knew that all too well. When she went on to talk about glowing algae, he had to act shocked and surprised. Every part of her explanation was animated and excited.

They reached his own village just as the sun was setting. It was quite a distance away from the farm, but it was the closest village to them. The people there knew of him at least, so when he walked in with three magic users, the whispers spread like wildfire. It was one way to let the entire area know he had been blessed or was going to be.

His companions stood out among the villagers. Their blue and white robes were incredibly crisp and clean. The gold trim shined in the last light of the day. Every head turned to watch them pass. They were some of the most important people of the nation and Kaden was walking with them.

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They decided to get a bed at the local pub that doubled as an inn. Jaxtor seemed eager to get a drink, as he vocalized that several times before they even made it there. They would pull out the fancy plates for them, Kaden was sure. Their village was at the edges of their realm. Over the mountains that the nest resided in was an ocean. No one really knew how far that went, at least no one he had ever met. As far as he knew, it just continued on until you got to the fire nation on the other side.

Just as they were opening the gate to the inn, he felt them. Zuma was coming in fast. He tried to push out his will to tell them to not land in the middle of the village, but they obviously were ignoring him when he heard their flapping wings above. The dirt of the road flew out in a gust, creating a spectacle.

If the local villagers had assumed he had been blessed, they would know for sure now when an Azure dragon came to greet him. Zuma landed with a thud, proud of the looks they were receiving. Eloise was laughing at the preening dragon.

Some villagers bowed in their presence, others just stood there staring at the glittering azure scales in awe. They let out a cool mist that made them all gasp and awe audibly at.

“Is this going to be a thing?” He rolled his eyes as he walked past them. “Zuma, we’re staying here tonight, but there’s nowhere big enough for you. You can, I guess, bed down in the street or possibly find somewhere safer?”

Zuma didn’t like this commentary and pushed their way through the gate, the metal screeching as it bent around their hard scales. Circling the tree that was growing on their large patio, they plopped around it and let out a huff. He didn’t think the inn owner was going to be too pleased with that.

A tall man watched the entire incident with his mouth agape. The inn owner. They all gave a cringing look at the man, waiting for him to scold them for letting a dragon destroy his gate.

He fell to his knees and started loudly saying, “I am not worthy! I’ve been honored by such a creature! This is a blessing on its own! We are not worthy of your patronage, great one!”

Zuma let out another misty huff, satisfied by the attention. At least they wouldn’t have to worry about the owner being angry at them. Iratoi whispered that she’d leave some extra gold for them when they left in the morning. He felt relieved that his companions could afford such a thing.

Eloise bowed to Zuma before following Jaxtor into the pub portion of the building. Kaden just shook his head at Zuma. “So this is gonna be a thing, huh?”

Zuma turned their head away from him.

He sighed and said, “you’re going to get spoiled from all this attention. We country folk can’t let this go to our heads, you hear?”

He patted them on their neck before he bid them farewell and went inside himself. The chattering of the crowd inside came to a halt the moment he stepped between the doors. The whole town would know by morning that not only had he been blessed, but he even became a dragon rider.

Kaden knew that this would help his family more than any money they received from the crown. Not only did he bring honor to them, but he brought honor to his village. They would all praise him for being blessed and joining the king’s elite. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it quite yet.

“So, first things first,” Eloise said as she slid a plate of food in front of him. “You’ll want to eat the greasiest things possible while we’re out here. They try to keep everything so healthy at the temples.”

Jaxtor slid him an ale and said, “second, they also don’t let us drink at the temple. They try to say it’s disrespectful or something, but it’s just ale. So drink up while you can.”

Iratoi laughed as she sat down with them. “And enjoy your bed here. I guarantee it’ll be more comfortable than what they give you. Some silly logic about how we should find comfort in the world and not our beds.”

Laughing, Kaden said, “the temple doesn’t sound very fun.”

“Despite what Eloise has said,” Jaxtor leaned over with a grin on his face, “it’s really not that wondrous.”

He could feel Eloise kick him underneath the table. He cackled as he took another swig of his ale. They chattered about all the things around the temple and what they did and didn’t like about it. It wasn’t as perfect as people made it out to be. Talking about their instructors, it sounded as if there were some of the stuffy old men Kaden had assumed would show up to take him.

“There are a lot more young people than old people,” Iratoi explained. “Often when you get older, you tire of the temple and choose to live off on your own. You’re not restricted to the temple, not after you’ve finished your training and your pilgrimage, anyway. By that point, they trust you enough to behave as a Water Realm representative.”

“If you’re ever a trouble maker though,” Eloise said with sparkles in her eyes, “they make you come back home.”

The evening ended well. His new companions were lively, and the villagers kept supplying them with food and drinks. There were perks to walking in with a dragon, it seemed.

His parents wouldn’t let them drink that much, if at all. Ale was expensive, and they never bought it. When his parents sent him and his brothers to the village, they would always stop by this specific inn and grab a few of the cheapest ones they could. What the villagers were providing them was the furthest from that.

He staggered up the steps. They elongated and changed sizes as he went. Jaxtor put his arm underneath Kaden’s and helped him climb the stairs, laughing as they did so. They tucked him into one of the beds in their shared room and his eyes crashed closed as soon as his head hit the pillow.

The magic seemed to purify his intoxication quicker than he would have liked. Before he realized it, he was no longer sleeping off a drunken night, but falling deep into a fitful slumber. Along with the restlessness came the dreams.

He stood again before his family, happy at the situation. He remembered this, and panic encroached on the edges of his mind as the darkness wrapped its tendrils around his family once more. This time, he couldn’t will himself to do anything. He just felt something pulling him under, pulling him down. He felt like he was drowning.

No spark illuminated the darkness, no light to chase away the shadows. The tendrils pulled at his family, ripping them away one by one. Their screams echoed across his mind, horrific and intense. Each one unaffected by the removal of the last before it was too late. The tendrils ripped away every family member, and Kaden watched helplessly as they were pulled into the darkness behind. He was left with a cold emptiness eating at his soul.

He was alone.

His body suddenly jerked to the side, and he felt like he had been thrown into a wall. He could feel something slither and wrap around his legs, working their way around his back, up to his chest.

Everything changed, and he was drowning. Water was filling his lungs, cold and foul tasting water. It wormed its way into his body and filled it with dread. He could feel a darkness touching his soul, holding it down. He coughed and spat, trying to expel it.

Sand was beneath his fingers, the blood seeping out of the body that had laid at his feet the last time he saw it. It was different this time. The vision had changed. He coughed, still gasping for air. A black sludge was expelled from his lungs and stained the sand, mixing with the blood already on the ground. A sizzling noise invaded his ears as the sludge ignited in the pool.

Gasping, he awoke in terror. Hands were holding him, his back was leaning between Jaxtor’s legs, he had been forcing him in place. Eloise and Iratoi held their hands over him, emitting a comforting blue light.

“Oh, thank the gods he’s alive,” wept Eloise.