He awoke the next day to a growl from Raenelir and he bolted upright, looking around wild-eyed as his mind raced to catch up with what he was seeing. Valen’s waking was helped along when Raen surged to his feet, staying low in a crouch as he growled.

When a return growl came from the mouth of the cave, Valen realized the danger that he was in and leapt to his feet, rolling away from the Highborn and pushing himself up to his knees to see another wyvern, looking very angry, at the cave’s mouth. It looked to be a larger female, and if he remembered his Southern wyverns correctly it was a High Mountain Ridgeback. The bony protrusions sticking out from her scaled back and long neck until almost the base of her skull gave it away.

She was roughly a third again the size of Raenelir, but her species tended to trade speed and agility for strength and relative hardiness. Her legs were more than twice as thick as Raen’s, and from her scarred visage she looked to be several years his elder as well. Why she had come to an old, abandoned nest he had no idea, but right now it did not matter.

He and Raenelir were in danger unless he was able to calm the two wyverns. He knew that the Highborn would listen to him no problem, but that was because they were flightbrothers. He was not bonded with this wild Ridgeback and without the flightbond or a Matriarch to force her into submission, this would be much more dangerous than even the moment he and his brother and dad had found Raen.

Moving ever so slowly so as not to startle or anger the female that stared them down, he began to inch away from Raenelir towards the opposite side of the cave.

The first step to easing tension with an angry wild wyvern, without the assistance of a Matriarch’s presence, was to make her believe fighting them would do her more harm than good. He did not need to tame her, simply get her to leave them be. Gritting his teeth, he looked around for something that might be able to suit his knees.

Yet as far as he could see, there was nothing there to help the situation.

Valen would have cursed, if he had possessed the energy to do so. He was just so tired of all the constant life and death situations. He glanced over at Raenelir, not wanting to have to put the Highborn in harm’s way right now and yet knowing that they might not have a choice.

Then came a sound he had hoped not to hear again for quite some time – the roar of a dragon. The Ridgeback reacted immediately, roaring and whirling about to face the direction the sound had come from. She took off, knocking aside any trees in her way as she extended her wings and took to the sky. There were more angry draconic cries, and the sound of snarling and rending, followed by what seemed like steel being struck. The dragon was armored, then, putting the Ridgeback at even more of a disadvantage.

Though the fighting was happening out of sight, Valen needed to see what was happening Despite the risk of being spotted, he rushed to the front of the cave and stuck close to the walls, peaking out around the cave’s mouth into the sky overhead where he saw the wyvern and dragon with its rider clashing. He could already tell that the poor Ridgeback was wavering, weaker than he had realized from some previously inflicted wounds.

It appeared as though she had already been in a fight recently and that was likely what had driven her to seek shelter in the cave they had been sleeping in.

He wished that he could help the poor girl but knew that to do so would mean giving their position away to a rider. They would either have to ensure the rider’s death, which he was not sure he was ready or even capable enough to do, or they would face far worse than a single dragon rider. Still, looking back at Raenelir, he saw that the Highborn was not happy just hiding either.

Groaning, Valen knew there was only one thing they could do. Only one thing his father would have expected him to do.

'I have to try and help.'

He did not waste time climbing onto Raen’s back; he would not be able to reach the struggling Ridgeback in time. So he resorted to something else.

“Raen, go!” he cried. With more a hiss than a roar the Highborn was off, leaping straight from the cave’s mouth into the sky, over the trees downed by the other wyvern as he spread his own wings and flew up to join the fight.

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It was obvious that the dragon and rider were not expecting the second wyvern, because they immediately tried to break away and escape. Yet the Ridgeback had locked her powerful claws around the edges of the dragon’s armor and her jaws had shut tight around its neck. They could not get away in time to avoid Raenelir’s attack.

The Highborn struck the other side of the dragon so hard that all three drakes went spinning through the air. Valen watched as the rider was nearly jerked from his saddle by the force of the blow. Valen wished he had a bow or something that would allow him to join in as well, but for now he would have to be content with watching and trusting that Raen would be alright.

The dragon was crying out in pain, a terrible sound somewhere between a roar and a squeal. Raenelir lashed with his claws at the dragon’s backside, managing to rip some of its armor away, even as the Ridgeback let go of its neck and then snapped her mouth shut on the bottom of the dragon’s jaw as it tried to unleash a jet of fire to force them away. If there was one thing Valen knew, it was that dragons and wyverns were natural enemies; there might have been a conflict between Raenelir and the other wyvern before, but now that their most hated natural enemy had appeared, it seemed as though that previous conflict had been forgotten.

For a long moment, Valen felt a rush of relief, thinking that the wyverns were about to win and everything would be okay. Then there came the sound of another roar and suddenly there were two more riders, smashing into both wyverns and knocking them away from the first. The wounded dragon limply winged its way to safety, even as the new arrivals set two streams of fire on the Ridgeback.

Now it was the wyvern’s turn to cry out in pain and Valen shuddered at the sound. Raenelir, however, recovered in midair from when he had been struck, whirling to launch himself at one of the newly arrived dragons. One stream of fire was cut off, though it looked as though the damage had already been done; the Ridgeback had begun to list towards the trees below, with the second rider diving down after her.

They were too far away for Valen to be able to help and he did not know what he could have done against an armored dragon on his own, anyways. So he was forced to turn his attention back to Raenelir’s fight against the other rider, hoping the Highborn would be able to pull off a miracle.

Dragon and wyvern whirled about in the air and as always Raen’s natural athleticism was in full effect as he spun about, deftly avoiding almost all of the dragon’s blows while nimbly scoring some of his own. Yet when the second dragon rider returned to the air, he knew that luck was about to run out.

He wanted to shout, wanted to say something, anything, to help his friend, but nothing came quickly enough to warn the Highborn before the other rider crashed into him from behind, ending his spree of evasions and sending him straight into a slash of his initial opponent’s claws. Raenelir cried out in pain, but Valen could do nothing to help. Even after deciding that he was no longer going to be useless, that he would learn to fight for himself and for those he cared about, he could do nothing to help his friend.

Just like he had not been able to do anything in Crove, or anytime danger had arisen before that.

The crushing weight of that fell on him as Raen took another blow, before going silent as one of the dragons struck him across the head and he began to fall from the sky. Valen collapsed to his knees at the mouth of the cave, watching in horror as the two riders guided their dragons down to catch Raenelir before he could hit the ground, holding him above the trees with vicious physicality.

Valen was confused about what they were doing at first, but then when he saw two more riders approaching, heading straight to where the Ridgeback had been downed.

They were not killing the wyverns, they were gathering them up and taking them away.

And now they had Raenelir, too, all because he had been stupid enough to think it was okay to let the Highborn go and try to help the other wyvern. It did not help that he knew it had been the right thing to do; right now, all he saw was his friend being carried away through the sky, too quickly for him to have possibly done anything to help.

Valen was useless, once again.

He collapsed and finally all that had happened since his home had burned hit him. It was like it had all been held back somehow by Raenelir's presence or by the constant drive to take the next step forward. Now he was feeling everything, all at once, and all he could do was weep into the dirt.

That was how he stayed for he knew not how long, up until there was the snap of a branch nearby. With an exhausted jerk looked up to see that noon had come and passed as he laid there, unmoving. His tears had long since dried up, his sobbing ended, leaving him to lie there in silence.

The sound of something approaching was finally enough to snap him back into reality, and with reality came boiling hot rage unlike anything he had ever felt before. He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring his disheveled, dirty state as he drew his sword, waiting for whoever or whatever was approaching to show itself.

Then Layne rode out of the trees on her horse, a hand held to her side with blood trickling through her fingers, her own face covered in dirt and bright red where he could see it, as though she had gotten too close to fire. Valen gaped.

“They… took... the others,” Layne rasped, her voice barely there at all.

Then she slipped from her horse and hit the ground, hard.