When I awoke the following day the rest of the team was there waiting for me. They certainly seemed a lot less willing to leave my side now, and honestly, I couldn't blame them. I felt like we had more of an understanding of what we needed to do now that we had our little talk in Willow's Well, but they all sat on the edge of their beds just staring at me.

"Hey, guys, what's up?" I said as I stretched, sitting up in my bed.

"We need to talk, Callan." Tristan began.

"Didn't we already talk?" I asked.

"Aeolith wants in on this talk."

"Aeolith? Wait, how do you know that?"

"She told us."

"She can talk to you now? Like Al'Doran could?"

"Yes. She spoke to me this morning. She has such a pretty voice, by the way."

"It is. It's like the sound of a summer breeze."

Tristan looked at me strangely.

"What?"

"What does a summer breeze sound like? Were you just trying to be poetic?"

"Nevermind. Where is she?"

"I'm at the roost. You can come now." Aeolith said, the last bit was more of a demand than a request.

"OK, I will get dressed and we will come over now," I sent back to her.

She cut the connection off rather abruptly.

"Is she upset?" I asked.

"Yup. But we are going to let her say why. It's not really our place to speak for her."

"This reminds me of that time my friend John was upset with his friend Jim, who he always said was his roommate, but we all know what that really means. You can only bring your roommate over for the holidays so many years in a row before we all know what's going on. And it's not like we would have judged him, we were totally fine with Jim. He was a great guy. But anyways, he said Jim was mad at him and asked us if we knew why, but we had to tell him that was something he needed to ask Jim about, but John was a total chicken when it came to emotional confrontation, so he was never going to...."

"Rutherford! You had been doing so well recently. What's with the prattling on today?"

"I only really do that when I'm nervous. And this is one of those times, you know? Because a dragon is upset, and she's my friend, or at least I think she's my friend, so it's not like one of those times where you can just attack a creature that's mad at you, but then again she might not really even be mad at me, because it was really your fault so she should just be needing to take her anger out and it might..."

"RUTHERFORD!"

"Oh....right....sorry."

"Let's just get ready and go out there."

Now I was nervous. I didn't want Aeolith mad at me. She was my bound familiar and was the part of me that made me feel complete. Hopefully, we could work out whatever she wanted to talk about. I pulled on my armor and got my weapons in place, then strapped on my bags of holding and we headed down to the main room of the inn.

"Good mornin' lads. Off to see your lady friend?" Patsy said to us as we came down the stairs.

"Yes, she wants to talk with us so I think we should head over."

Patsy held up one finger to stop us and reached under the counter. She picked up some wrapped items and tossed them to each of us from behind the counter.

"Here, take these bacon sandwiches for yer morning. Now get over to see what the lass wants."

She made a shooing motion with her hands to get us out the door. A moment later we were out the door and standing in the street. I unwrapped my sandwich a bit and began to eat it. Patsy had toasted the bread so that the butter on the sandwich didn't get the bread all soggy. I was going to need to teach them how to make mayo at some point or find out if they just didn't know to put it on a bacon sandwich.

We set off toward the roost. I finished my sandwich in just a few bites and crumbled up the wrapper and put it in my bag to throw away later. We walked quickly so as not to keep Aeolith waiting. When we arrived we looked up at Aeolith who was helping to hold something up near the top of the roost for someone adding a beam to the ceiling. She noticed us there a few moments later and reached out to all minds nearby.

"Leave us. You can finish the upgrades later."

Every person but us bowed and began to hastily move to leave the area.

"Good morning Aeolith. I hope we didn't keep you waiting."

She stared down at me without saying a word. Or thinking a word. Or however it worked. She continued to stare until the mood was so uncomfortable that I was about to start squirming where I stood.

"Callan," She said the one word and it made the tension even worse.

After waiting for a moment and she didn't continue I asked, "Yes?"

"I know what you want to do here and what you are hoping to achieve, and I sympathize with you. Al'Doran was not only my friend as well, he was the last of my species."

My shoulders fell. I figured I knew where this was going to go.

"I know, Aeolith. And I know that what we did was wrong."

"Yes, it was. And I cannot believe I let you talk me into it." She said, her tone going harsh. "You could have died. And I have had some time to think about what that means now."

I stood there waiting to take whatever she was going to dish out to me.

"You do well not to try to defend your actions now. What would happen to me if you died? I would be left in Al'Doran's position, but much worse. I do not have the luxury of being hundreds of years old and lived with many riders and dragons to teach me all I need to know about this world and being a great dragon. I could be driven mad with grief! I could be left here alone, or worse be driven to something drastic to try to rejoin you." Her eyes were angry but hurt.

"I know my heart. And I'm sorry. That was not my intention."

"Well, whether it was your intention or not, it was almost the result. You have had a growing darkness inside you that I can no longer ignore. When you were attacking that mage, there was a darkness coming off of you. You fought ferociously, but you did not fight like yourself. I thought it was shadow coming off of you. What can cause that? I was worried I had lost you to the shadow, which I think would be worse because I would be forced to kill you instead of just watching you die."

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I looked up at her confused.

"So you do not know what caused this? Let us look at your skills."

"You can do that?"

"Of course, I can. Just as you can see mine I can see yours. We are bonded. Essentially one."

Her eyes went unfocused like others do when they are viewing screens we cannot see.

"Dragon's Rage? How did you get this skill?"

"It showed up in the last dungeon when we were fighting the minotaur. When I thought we had lost Tristan."

The others in the party sat up at this. Apparently able to hear our whole conversation. Which made me more embarrassed.

"You do not know what this is. It is a dark skill. Al'Doran told me about it once. He said there was once a rider who had lost his mate. He was driven to anger and rage and began using this skill. He turned into a berserker every time he went into battle. Eventually, he used the skill so many times he couldn't turn it off. He was driven into an eternal rage that eventually consumed him and he died because he was unable to turn it off. He dropped dead of sheer exhaustion in the middle of a battle."

That hit hard. I was suddenly afraid of the skill. I had only used it twice, but how many times was too many? Fifty? Twelve? Three? I couldn't risk that.

"Now that I have your attention I need to make sure you understand the gravity of what we just did. You have a team of people who are able to protect you. They can work with us and were so willing to go with you that they swore an oath. They are here to help. Two is always better than one, and three, four, five are much better odds. What if we had gotten there and there had been ten Shadow Beasts? We could have been swarmed and killed in a matter of seconds. Are you seeing what the issues are here?"

"Yes. And I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about those repercussions. I only thought about getting revenge for what they did to Al'Doran. And then we almost lost Tristan as well and I couldn't take losing someone else. I was getting lost in my grief and I still feel lost in it. I just want to make the Shadow Beasts hurt as badly as we do. As badly as I do." I said, beginning to tear up at the memories that were still so fresh in my mind.

"I know, Callan. I hurt too. I fear for those around us every day. But whether we like it or not we have to remember that we are more important to the cause than anyone else and we need to be sure that we are here to save those who cannot save themselves. It feels wrong, it feels selfish, but we have to do it. The fate of this entire world is weighing on our shoulders now."

"But I don't want it to be on my shoulders. This happens in every story I've read or been told even in my past life. I don't want to be the one that is singled out and then has the fate of the entire world thrust on my shoulders. I just want to be normal. I just want to go back to my other life."

"So much so that you wish to never have met me? To never have met Tristan, Rutherford, Vokin, and Randal? What about these people? You would leave them to their fate?"

I couldn't answer that. I wanted to say yes, but I knew that was not who I was at my core. I couldn't doom an entire world because of my selfish desire to go back to being a nobody who went to work and then laid around playing games and petting his dog.

"I thought not. You are not that kind of man. You are better than that. Now, pick yourself up, and let's take the time we need to grieve. If you do not do that you will be driven to rash decisions like the one we just made. I see that now. If you want to make another bad decision, then you can do that, I can't stop you, but remember those of us you will hurt in the process."

"No, I don't want to do that, but I don't know how to deal with this grief. I don't know how to process what is happening in my heart."

"That is natural. These feelings aren't fun. They aren't positive feelings that we can sort and hold onto. They are terrible feelings that we have to process through and then try to move past. You will never forget them, but they will become less severe eventually. For now, express them rather than act on them."

"You are absolutely right. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry to all of you for putting you through this. It was never my intention to hurt anyone else."

"We know. And I needed to say this to you as well because it was part of my grieving process. Not only did I lose my friend and the last of my species, I almost lost you. Now, since you have been thoroughly scolded come and be close to me."

I walked over and Aeolith lowered her head. She was even larger than before now and I could barely reach around her head with my arms. But I did. I held her and hugged her for a long minute. She let out that loud growl from her chest that always reminded me of purring. We stayed there, just cherishing the moment we spent with each other. I pulled back and scratched her scales. Then I turned to the others. Rutherford saw his moment and came and picked me up in a huge bear hug. Despite his large size, he was just a teddy bear. The others came over as well and we shared a moment.

"Alright, this has been fun, but a bunch of dudes hugging is not exactly the image I'm going for here with the whole, fearsome Drgaonrider, slayer of shadows," I said, grinning.

Everyone immediately moved away and tried to look nonchalant.

"Where is Randal at?" I asked.

No sooner had I said this than Zephyr came walking up, Randal not far behind.

"Did I miss the hugs? If I missed the hugs I'm gonna be so mad."

We all burst out into laughter and rushed Randal to hug him as well. His eyes went wide as we all rushed him.

"No wait, I was only kidding!"

But it was too late. We dogpiled on him and we could hear him groan under our weight. Zephyr thought we were playing some kind of game and decided to join the pile. That was when we heard the snap. We quickly got everyone off the pile and Rutherford had to heal Randal's arm that had gotten caught under his body when he jumped on him. A few minutes later though and we were all laughing at the incident.

We bid Aeolith and Zephyr farewell and walked to the town hall. I asked the receptionist if there was a room we could use to meet where others wouldn't be likely to bother us. She took us to the back to a room that was a bit like a modern conference room. It had a long table with chairs set around it.

"Would you like anything brought in? I can have some ale or snacks for you guys." The receptionist offered.

"That would be great. Thank you." I said.

She left the room and returned a few minutes later with cups, a pitcher, and a couple of bowls with fruits and nuts in them. She set them on the table and curtsied as she left.

"OK, guys. I wanted to talk with you all about what our next moves would be. I know that right now we are just not ready to face the Shadow Beasts. We need to come up with a way to become strong enough to take more of them on. Does anyone have any ideas?"

"Like going to more dungeons and trying to level up that way?" Randal offered.

"That would work, but it's dangerous. Evidence, the last Dungeon we went into. Tristan almost died. Well, actually he did die."

"Is there someone that might know more about what can make you stronger, Callan?" Rutherford said.

"Unfortunately no, Al'Doran was the last one who knew about Dragonriders. Or at least the last one we know of. Even Brutus doesn't know about the class."

We all sat there for a while trying to think of something that we could do. A few more ideas were tossed out, but they were even weaker than the first two ideas.

Suddenly Tristan lit up.

"There may not be a person that could help you, but there might be a place."

"What do you mean, Tristan?" I asked.

"You remember when we were on the Dragonrider island? How Al'Doran had shown me those books on Necromancy?"

"Yes?" I said confused at first, but then it came back to me. "Oh! Al'Doran mentioned that all the books on almost every subject were in the library beneath the dorms! We could go there to look for more information and see if they have any books on what we could do to get stronger! Tristan, you are a genius!"

"That be a wonderous idea. But we can't all go. Aeolith could probably hold some of us, but she wouldn't be able to carry all of us plus Zephyr. Al'Doran probably could have, but she isn't that big yet."

"Right, but we could still have some of us go and travel back with books we find. I have the bag of holding after all. I'm sure we can bring something back for everyone. I wish we could take Randal to get outfitted, but maybe we can bring some items back as well."

"It's OK Callan, I wouldn't want to go without Zephyr. So I understand. Just bring me back what you can."

I nodded to him, having already made that assumption. I had to think about who should go.

"Aeolith," I said reaching out to her with my mind.

"Yes, Callan." She responded.

"How many of us do you think you could carry to the Isle of Cathar?"

She paused for a moment and thought.

"It would depend on who went. If Rutherford goes, then only two or three of you. Otherwise, I think I can take three people comfortably."

"OK. I think it will be myself, Vokin, and Tristan then. We have decided to try to go to the library there to see if we can find anything on Dragonriders to make me stronger. We also want to find any books that might help the others and any weapons and armor that might help Randal."

"That is a great idea. Who came up with it?"

"Tristan did."

"Good for him. He is becoming quite clever. I knew he would be a bright boy one day."

With that decided, we finished the snacks and ale, then left the conference-style room. We thanked the receptionist on the way out and went to the inn for now to prepare. If we left soon we could leave today and arrive while we still had sunlight.