CHAPTER 34 –THE DRAGON RIDER
There was no denying this intruder was from the dragon kingdom, judging by the armor and of course the dragon. Smooth-plated amethyst dragon emblems spiraled over the rider’s leather undercoat, reflecting the black-steel metal from the helmet with amethyst winged-ears that connected to the visor. Mitakahn had to be careful and assume the dragon rider was a threat. He clumsily went for his sword with his right hand. The dragon rider took a ready stance. Mitakahn could tell just from one repositioning that she was a woman. All he saw from the visor slit of her helmet were dark eyes, but they curved at the edges, like that of only a woman with almond shaped eyes. This would also explain the small stature beneath the rustic armor. They got closer and Mitakahn became less worried. Even if she did hail from the most evil kingdom in all of MagnaThora, this unassuming rider posed no threat to him.
Mitakahn let his guard down slightly and the dragon rider took it to her advantage. She swooped low and kicked the boulder Mitakahn carried causing him to fall over. She pounced on him, and he threw his weight. They tumbled over together and Mitakahn landed with the chunk of boulderock on top of her helmet, pinning it to the ground. Without hesitation, the dragon rider slipped her helmet off and kicked Mitakahn back. He stumbled uncontrollably, giving into the pain from his hand. The rider jumped on top of him. Mitakahn stole a good look at her. She had long, wild brunette hair to match her dark brown eyes, a serious brow, with delicate lips, and perfect white teeth. She brandished a dagger close enough to Mitakahn’s neck to gain his full cooperation.
Mitakahn gathered his strength and threw her off, staggering to his feet. He hobbled around; the boulderock was still attached to his other hand. Exhaustion would soon win the day. He had to find a way to come to terms. Mitakahn searched his mind for something neutral and non-aggressive to say.
“I do not want to hurt you.”
“You will never get the chance.”
“My name is Mitakahn. The storm has punished me too.”
The dragon rider looked at Mitakahn cradling his own hand.
“I don’t trust you, northern boy.”
“That’s fair. I think I know what you mean. You come from a dark legend. Right now, mothers all over MagnaThora are telling their children stories to keep them in bed because if they don’t, a monster like you will get them. Most people hope to the gods that those monsters are just that…stories, but here you are…standing right in front of me. Nightmares of the past come to life. I have every reason to assume you are hostile. Yet still, I…do not…want…to hurt you.”
The dragon rider continued to stare at Mitakahn. Her demeanor did not change one bit. Mitakahn honestly could not tell if he was getting through to her or not. Then she spoke.
“You can call me…Zora.” Against her better judgment, she decided to let her guard down, but only slightly. Mitakahn jumped on the opportunity to continue the conversation.
“Is that your dragon?”
“Yes, my child rests grounded, waiting to be revived.”
It worked like a charm. Zora’s focus immediately switched over to the downed dragon.
“Your dragon is the most impressive thing I have ever seen.”
“Thank you. You can call him Fathom.”
“How do we help Fathom?”
“I have this.”
Zora revealed a massive snowball she had stowed away.
“You still have snow?”
“Not just snow. This is a fruit.”
“A fruit?”
“Here”
Zora broke the giant snowfruit against her dagger and it cracked perfectly in half. Inside it was hollow but not empty. Zora felt around and pulled the blue goo out of it with her fingers. She let it accumulate in her cupped-hand and brought it over to the giant slumbering black dragon. Zora let the juice of the snowfruit drip onto the dragon’s face. The juice leaked into his mouth. She had good aim and made sure it got where it needed to go. Some of it, of course, missed the dragon’s long scaly-lipped mouth and dripped down the tough reptile skin. Zora got close and wiped the excess snowfruit juice across the dragon’s nose. The refreshing spray brought the dragon back to life. Fathom stirred as if he was shaking free of a spell. He did not care for the events of late. He swallowed and then licked at the cold essence lathered under his nose, his forked tongue made sure to get every last drop. Then he spat some fire and lifted into the air like a wild beast. Mitakahn backed away startled. Zora smirked.
“He will be okay.” She reassured him, “This is a common trick when a rider is stuck away from the city during the winter time.”
“You have winters where you come from?”
“I come from MagnaThora just like you, lion knight.”
“I am no knight and there hasn’t been a winter in quite some time.”
“You are trying to make a fool of me. You northerners are all the same. You think yourselves better than us, when in reality, you know nothing of the south and what it takes to call it home.”
“The southern gate was built for a reason.”
“By cowards.”
“By the gods.”
“You think it protects you. Who do you think protects it?”
Mitakahn looked over at Chronis who twitched his head and looked back at Mitakahn.
“Why do you look so worried?” the dragon rider asked.
“I think you are a time traveler. And I think that storm brought you here.”
“That is nonsense, Mitrocon. There is no such thing as time travel. You unfroze the rabid thunderbolt and for that I am in your debt. When Fathom returns, I will help you fix your hand as repayment.”
“That is not necessary but very gracious of you. And my name is Mit-A-kahn.”
“That is what I said Mitercon.”
Mitakahn smiled and nodded his head. He silently figured out another way to bring up the fact that she was from another time, the very pages of history. Zora stepped out and began a call that placed somewhere between a whistle and a song. It was of pure melody and echoed through the valley. A giant roar let out and then the world shook. The crashing noise in reality was the dragon redirecting his flight pattern.
“Listen, I think something very serious happened to you during this storm.” Mitakahn tried to get her to pay attention to him, but it was not working. “A couple of days ago I almost got beaten to death by thieves.”
Zora finally focused on him at those last words. She scanned him up and down in order to tell if he was being honest. Mitakahn knew if she thought he was lying nothing would stop her from confronting him about it.
“You do not show any signs of a beating.”
“That’s because the storm took them away, but I can assure you my left wrist is completely broken. Here, take a look at this.”
Mitakahn lifted his tunic up and revealed to her the bruises on his ribs. Most of his torso was completely healed. This created such a deep contrast between the bruised sections that it looked like there was a line going down Mitakahn’s abdomen. It was all the proof he needed. No human being heals like this, in extreme patches, it did not matter what kingdom you came from. She was starting to consider something was wrong. She looked north and finally acknowledged something she had been remaining willfully dense of since the snow melted.
“Why do the Burning Mountains smoke like that?”
“That is exactly the kind of question no one from the last millennia would ask.”
From the clouds, Fathom descended in a nosedive, still stretching himself out since the turbulent storm. He did a freefall spin and turned over, spreading his dark wings as far as they could go to catch the wind and slow him down. The giant black dragon brought his wings back in and landed before Zora, bowing. She rubbed his head and walked away. Mitakahn watched in sheer contentment. It looked as if she was foraging for a moment. When she came back she had the metal tail feathers that Chronis had shot at the stone. That intrigued Chronis enough to keep an eye on her.
“It is rare to come across, but I have seen it before. The electrified boulderock is perma-binding, which is the worst possible scenario for you. There is simply no way to take it off cleanly. I am sorry, Mitakahn.”
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“How can you be sure?”
“I spent my entire education studying the elements of MagnaThora. Boulderock was not exactly Day 1 material, but you wouldn’t find it as a focus in any advanced lessons. Thankfully, I know of a way to fuse it to your bone. It will heal your wrist and I can make the procedure as painless as possible, but the burden will be yours to carry for the rest of your life.”
“That last part about the burden aside, I want to trust you… Sadly, this is not the first time I have been the subject of a radical experiment that started with the innocent act of picking up Chronis’ feathers. So why don’t you tell me exactly what you have in mind?”
“At first I was just going to displace the rock from your hand both covertly and cleverly. Now I am thinking about involving a fourth element.”
“A fourth?”
“Boulderock, flesh, silver, and steel…”
Mitakahn looked down, “My sword?”
“I made a gauntlet for my brother. One that retracted whenever he sheathed his sword. I always wished there could be a way to make it form from nothing, a way to obtain full autonomy.” Zora rubbed her chin and then noticed him, “What?”
“Where you come from…you are a forgesmith?”
“I was raised in the forges of Morticomb Caverns. For a time, it was all I knew. Why do you ask?”
“I never expected to meet… someone from south of the great gate. I didn’t know what to think.”
“What did you expect?”
“Something far less beautiful-”
Zora stopped what she was doing and Mitakahn immediately felt awkwardness seep into the air between them. He did not realize what he said until it was too late. Now the words were out and there was no taking it back. Zora went back to tinkering as if nothing happened, immediately relieving Mitakahn who could’ve sworn he caught the smallest of smirks on her face.
“You are lucky to have crossed paths with such a rare bird.”
“I wouldn’t call my luck of late good, though Chronis is a treasured friend.”
“The metal of his feathers is unlike any metal in MagnaThora. Its very composition is in flux.”
“Will the silver bond with the blade of the sword?”
“Yes, the sword will be far more valuable after this, effective against foes both human and supernatural alike. But there is something else to Chronis’ metal. Imagine being at rest… in flux. A paradox in itself. His metal is practically alive, it twitches between solid and fluid interchangeably, which makes it a perfect candidate for the transient element in the binding; boulderock to sword to bone.”
Mitakahn tried to grasp the idea by repeating it back to Zora, “This binding will combine my flesh and bone with that of the silver feather and boulderock.”
“A metal fist would come in handy the next time a thief tries to beat you up.”
“You make a fair point, if I even had a choice.”
“But you do not.”
“No, I do not,” he chanted along with her.
“I am going to make this a good thing, Mitakahn.”
“Thank you, Zora.”
By the time they were done setting up for the procedure it was well into the night. Mitakahn was lying down with his bare arm spread out and held down. Chronis hopped along beside him, checking out his own shedding being used in some crazy human experiment. Two tail feathers placed across both sides of Mitakahn’s left arm, one silver feather lay across the top of the stone, and the final feather lay on the hilt of Mitakahn’s sword.
While Zora was getting ready to forge the stone from his hand she started explaining. “Fathom is old enough to control the temperature of his flame. I have even trained him to be able to dance different temperatures together in his forge. We have gotten so good at our trade that I can perform what is called a cold-fire forge. The bond needs to happen on a cellular level to fuse the stone with your bone, so the fire has to be so hot it changes color temperature to blue.
“I know techniques to form protective low heat layers and splice them into the forge to protect you from harm. You will feel pain from the actual fusion of flesh and bone during the procedure, it will hurt like hell tomorrow, and it will look scarier than anything you can imagine, but if you trust me and do not move, I can turn this handicap into an invincible piece of armor.”
“I trust you.”
“Lie back.”
“I am ready.”
Caww!
Chronis launched into the air to be free of the splash-zone. Zora finished reading from her small burgundy velvet book and slipped it back into her satchel. She started an enchantment in another language. “Groomdi ola cornesosa. Cesslen triadnine lewadodoon. Caneiad ola jas doladoon.”
Fathom choked up and right before Mitakahn was completely doused in raging hot fire he saw Zora smiling. He immediately filled with dread. Was this all a show? Was Mitakahn really just dinner? The dragon kingdom from ancient history always had a bad name. That is not the impression Mitakahn got from Zora, so he did not flinch when the dragonfire poured down upon him. Despite the brief nudge of doubt, he trusted his true feelings. He had faith in his newfound friend. The dragon’s fire did not horribly burn him. In fact, it was so low in temperature it felt more like a warm breeze.
“Groomdi ola cornesosa”
Mitakahn watched fire spewing out of Fathom’s mouth change from deep below. The fierce red and yellow flames generated a blue core that overtook the entire flame. It roared over Mitakahn, but a thin veneer of red flame danced around him, maintaining a barrier between him and the cold fire. The top tail feather melted and broke down into the boulderock.
The stone melted on his hand. It covered his fingers, but he did not burn. He still had all kinds of fire raging around him. The fire whipped and herded the boiling stone across Mitakahn’s left hand to where the tail feathers paralleled each other from the knuckle of his thumb and pinky to the joints of his wrist. It looked like a trick of the eye. All of that glowing white rock melted down into two tiny metal feathers.
“I’m afraid for this next part,” Zora yelled over the flames to her subject, “there is no avoiding the pain.”
She tweaked Fathom’s head, and he slightly changed the degree in which he spewed flame. The feathers could no longer maintain their individual composure and melted onto Mitakahn’s flesh. He could not help but scream as his flesh seared from the metal feathers fusing with him. The molten silver slithered across Mitakahn wrists and seeped into the scrapes from the broken jar. The mixed alloy of hawk-silver and boulderock coursed through Mitakahn’s veins and found the central skeletal structure. The metal was so broken down it filled the fractures in his wrist bones.
Like a whip, Zora forged a ribbon of pale cold fire that ran up the streaming metal to where it merged with the bone and ignited the fusion effect. The stone-metal alloy exploded and became one with his flesh and bone, mixing with his blood, connecting to his very essence. The bonding in the bones sealed the breaks together better than any cast or brace ever could. The pain was excruciating because his wrist was forcing itself to reset, regrow, and re-heal. The worst it got the more Mitakahn remembered the rest of his pain. In his screams he channeled all of the frustration he felt from his problems as a way of releasing them; a desperate attempt to free him from his burdens. The pain subsided, dialed down to a dull sore.
Fathom seemed to have turned the tide of his fiery rage towards the sword now, the last piece of the puzzle. As the sword bonded with the silver tail feather; a soothing sensation took hold of Mitakahn’s left hand. It was coming from a new encompassing flame with hints of green around its edges. It had to be some sort of third flame, but Mitakahn’s ability to focus and reflect on the situation was getting harder and harder. The entire process exhausted Mitakahn. By the end he could not keep his eyes open.
Mitakahn slept well into the night and even past sunrise. He would have wished he woke up just a little bit sooner to be there for her departure. The loud crack of the wind was what startled him awake. By then it was too late. Zora was in the air gaining altitude quickly and clearly flying south. She was in for a long journey home. Mitakahn had missed his chance to say goodbye and thank the dragon girl.
“Well, at least you stuck around.” He said to Chronis who was looking at him cock-eyed perched on a blossom tree. “Looks like I have part of you in me now, little buddy.” Chronis hopped around and chirped enthusiastically.
The chunk of boulderock was completely gone, more importantly so was the pain. He got to his feet and rubbed his hands together. He looked down at his bare fingertips, void of any boulderock remains. He never thought he would see them again. Mitakahn carefully examined his left wrist as he wiggled it freely, fully healed. All of the cuts on his hand were healed with silver scars twisted around his wrist, down his forearm. They were sore and pain coursed through his body upon touch, but besides that and the bruises on his ribs, Mitakahn had now made a full recovery.
He brushed himself off and walked over to his sword on the ground. Mitakahn picked it up with his left hand and out from the scars came the boulderock armor. Shining silver metal linked together in slivers up his wrist and palm, then separately spinning together around each of his fingers.
He had full functionality, touching each tip of his fingers to his thumb around the grip of the sword. When it came together, the reflecting shine turned the armor white like ivory stone and then faded back to the mirror silver. It felt great and even balanced his arm better with the sword, creating a more fluid and sustainable strike. Mitakahn named his sword after the feeling he felt when the gauntlet first opened. From this day forward he would call it Coldstark.
When Mitakahn finished practicing with his new gauntlet, he sheathed the sword and upon release of the hilt, the gauntlet retracted. He rubbed his wrist. The transition was not without a price. Mitakahn now knew what it felt like to shove an entire gauntlet of armor into a few scars. The intense pressure the imposition put on his flesh gave off a painful sensation. Even still, it wasn’t that bad. What Zora did for him prevented Mitakahn from spending the rest of his life as a cripple. The engineering involved to pull off such a feat was truly impressive. If only he could have thanked the forger responsible for such a marvel.
Mitakahn concentrated. If the boulderock armor responded to the sword then in theory he could make the scars respond with each other and form the gauntlet without the sword. He tried sensing both of them on his arm. His mind was still too scattered to focus properly. He just could not make it work. Mitakahn exhaled. For now, he would let it go and wait to call upon the gauntlet another time. He had a lot of catching up to do on the road.
With his wits once again with him, Mitakahn could easily divine the way back. He spent the time carefully examining his new piece of armor. It was so fascinating… to say the least. He could not tell if he was hallucinating but he had to admit to himself that the gauntlet was changing colors between shades of silver, like a moving reflection. There was no metal in the sciences of man that changed fluidly from the charcoal of ore to the white of ivory.
It was a part of him now, held together by the very same magic holding the vast lands of MagnaThora together. Mitakahn closed his eyes and imagined a connection between him and MagnaThora. There was no noise, but when he opened his eyes, the gauntlet had formed around his hand without any contact with his sword. As soon as his foot crossed the threshold back onto the Epitaph Road, Mitakahn knocked into someone. The gauntlet retreated into his wrist and Chronis screeched.
“Sudden hell!”
“My sincerest apolog-” Mitakahn stopped mid-sentence. He could not believe his eyes. He had just brushed shoulders with the last person in the world he would expect to see out here.
“You look like you’ve been through the Nethers, cousin.”