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Akemi’s fur was fluffed up in the harsh wind as the dragons soared through the cloudy night sky.
The dragons had allowed the wolf patrol to ride them all the way to Sascha’s kingdom of Aerulis, which was over one hundred miles away. But when riding a dragon, the possibly two day journey would turn into a short flight.
The dragon that was carrying her on its back was ice blue with white highlights and purple eyes. She was very beautiful, slim and sleek in the air. She had told Akemi that her name was Sky Wing, which was just perfect for her colors and air speed.
Sky Wing dropped down a bit, going under the dragon formation.
Akemi lost her balance and dug her claws into the ice dragon’s skin but not breaking the skin, blinded by the increasing dark and misty clouds that blew weightlessly into her face. She screamed with fear, lowering her belly fur down on Sky Wing’s back. “Don’t do that!” She begged.
“Wolf no fear,” Sky Wing reassured her confidently.
If anyone here was afraid of such great heights it was Akemi, but she forced herself to relax and kept a good grip on the female dragon. In fact, she wrapped her paws around Sky Wing’s skinny neck. The ice dragon rose up again, flying in line with the huge formation.
She saw Sascha ahead of her, riding on the jet-black male dragon Kuro. Sascha had explained to her that somehow he hadn’t been injured by Harloc when he had first turned on him.
The heroic white she-wolf was just a short distance between her and Sky Wing.
Akemi was proud to call her a friend. Sascha had risked her life to save her from Harloc, who had used her to lure the Twilight Pack and Sascha into his territory. Itachi had been the one to take her captive and bring her to what the dragons called the Meadows of Agrona just over the mountain.
Now that Harloc was dead the Meadows would grow back to its lush and beautiful form. Perhaps even become a little forest of birch trees or even twilight firs. It was very hard to get to but perhaps if the Twilight Pack was driven out of their territory they could move over the mountain and into the Meadow where the dragons lived.
Obviously there was an alliance between them now.
Sky Wing caught up with Kuro and Sascha. They kept a good distance between themselves so that their wings did not collide together, flying side by side through the skies over Windstorm City. “What is Aerulis like?” Akemi asked Sascha.
“It’s very beautiful,” Sascha answered. “I lived in the Rosewood Forest.” Rosewood Forest sounded like a nice place for a wolf pack to live. That might also be a possibility for the Twilight Pack, to come live there if they ever needed somewhere to go and the dragons weren’t around to help them.
The gray she-wolf imagined the trees of pine and maybe oak, and a hollow log with roses growing from it, thus earning the forest’s name Rosewood.
Suddenly, Sascha seemed to see something down below. Akemi followed Sascha’s gaze down to the ground and saw a long line of knights were leaving the city of Windstorm behind.
Was it because of the dragons flying above them? Akemi felt fear rush through her chest and the fur along her spine stood up.
“Wait a minute,” Sascha sounded bewildered. “I think I know the two men following close behind!”
“Huh?” Akemi raised a brow with astonishment. “The knights here are killers! Don’t play around with them!”
“The ones I know aren’t knights!” Sascha replied with the biggest smile of happiness. “They’re druids.”
There were druids in Windstorm City? Following a huge band of knights? That sounded strange. There had never been a druid in Windstorm, at least not in over a decade. “Huh?” Akemi repeated more quietly.
“Go down to the ground and follow the knights,” Sascha told Kuro, and within an instant he flew quickly downward.
“Sky Wing, can you follow Sascha?” She asked quickly, and the ice blue dragon did as she was asked.
Akemi yelped with fear as Sky Wing dropped out of the sky and started to fly over the moonlit green land of the kingdom of Windstorm, but she held her awkward grip on Sky Wing’s slim neck.
Sky Wing landed gently on the ground beside Kuro, the wind from her wings causing the nearby trees to sway back and forth. Sascha leaped off Kuro, approaching the knights that had stopped in front of them.
Akemi jumped off also, happy to have her paws touch solid cold earth again.
Akemi’s heart sank when the men screamed and yelled, pointing their crossbows at the two dragons. Kuro snarled and Sky Wing lowered her head, backing away slowly.
No human could understand the words of animals, as far as Akemi knew. Except maybe Fighting Master Rei, the man that had trained Sascha before the gray she-wolf had been taken captive by Harloc’s horde.
But he wasn’t around to translate a bark, so they were in a bit of trouble. Kuro and Sky Wing could easily kill the men, but they knew not to go against Sascha’s wishes... unless it became vital that they turned and flew away.
“Please! Don’t shoot!” Sascha begged, and then winced in pain as she tripped on her bad arm. It was her left arm, which had apparently been caught in Harloc’s mouth when he’d picked her up in his deathly jaws.
But unfortunately, as it had been for every wolf since the Creation of the Earth, the humans could not understand her and so her words were nothing but a pitiful bark to them.
“Sascha, we need to get out of here,” she growled to her white furred friend sternly. “You must be mistaken about your druid friends being here.”
“No,” she said quietly, and then her green eyes caught something in the crowd of knights. “Titus, and... Zachery!” She added with the greatest euphoria, dashing toward her friends. Some of the knights shot at her, but even though she was wounded Sascha was able to dodge and jump out of the way of every one of them.
Akemi was filled with worry; especially when one of the arrows nicked the top of Sascha’s slim back. What she was doing seemed impossible! How did she possibly dodge human arrows? It was almost unearthly.
But there had to be an explanation; perhaps the druids were known to be very sleek and skillful in those parts of Aerulis and Sascha had picked up on it?
When she finally reached the two men she had spotted, she unintentionally spooked the horses a bit and barked playfully toward them. Akemi couldn’t tell which one was Titus and which one was Zachery, but for druids they were both fine looking humans. They didn’t look as ratty and mangy as she had pictured forest men to look like.
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“Don’t shoot the wolves, sir!” A dark brown haired man with green eyes said loudly to the captain of the knight platoon.
The knight captain looked bewildered. “It is a wolf, why shouldn’t my men kill it? It looks like a wolf-dog, and all wolf-dogs must be killed.”
“I raised this wolf. Her name is Sascha, and she is as much of a druid as I am!” Zachery shot back at the captain, getting off his black horse and kneeling down in front of Sascha.
He patted her over the head, scratching behind her ears, ignoring the fact that his hands were becoming scarlet from the remaining blood on Sascha’s white fur. Akemi had forgotten that her white furred friend had washed herself in a puddle of melted ice to get the dark colored blood and soot off her usually glistening white pelt.
However, the stinging wounds still remained. And they would take a couple of days to fully heal, perhaps even a few weeks.
Zachery pulled Sascha gently into an embrace, not wanting to upset her open wounds. “It’s been so long...” Sascha said quietly, her voice barely audible to Akemi. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Akemi slowly approached, extremely nervous to be greeting a human in a friendly way for the first time in her life.
Her head was low, ready to flee if the humans tried anything. “You’ve met a friend, have you Sascha?” Zachery smiled, his face being covered in licks and kisses by the white she-wolf. He slowly moved his head toward Akemi, crouching down and not moving a muscle. To him Akemi was a strange wolf who had not been socialized with humans, and that was true... but of course she had no intentions of harming the two men.
“Come here, girl,” Zachery said calmly to the gray speckled she-wolf, slowly reaching out his hand for her to catch his scent.
Akemi flattened her ears uncertainly, glanced worriedly at Sascha, and then looked back to Zachery. She outstretched her head, sniffing his fingers and then pressing her cold nose into his hand.
“What are you, a wolf whisperer?” Titus asked sarcastically. “Wolves hate me.”
“Maybe you’re just not patient enough with them.”
Titus rolled his eyes. “Okay, perhaps you and King Avyrus were right,” he said with embarrassment. “The druids will be saved by a white wolf.”
“At last you’ve figured that out!” Zachery laughed, patting Akemi on her gray cheeks. It was a very dangerous place to stroke a wolf, for at any moment the wolf could turn on him and bite his extremity; his wrist veins.
But of course Akemi would never do such a thing to anyone unless she had to, and alas she had no reason right now.
“Yes,” Titus growled quietly, and then went on with a mocking voice, “and I see they’ve brought dragons with them.”
Zachery didn’t seem to be bothered by the dragons, and Akemi did not know why. Humans didn’t usually like dragons and for obvious reasons. “Perhaps that is all part of the prophecy,” he said in response to Titus’ comment.
The knights seemed to become bewildered by his words. Titus narrowed his eyes. “You’ve lost it!” The druid warrior snapped.
Titus’ horse reared on its back legs as suddenly Kuro and Sky Wing advanced toward them. Akemi ran back toward them, waving her tail.
“Can you tell them our plan?” The gray speckled she-wolf inquired hopefully. “We don’t need the knights of Windstorm City to fulfill what we were born to do ourselves.”
Kuro nodded his head and looked over toward the knights and Titus and Zachery. “Wolf says that knights not needed,” he spoke in the tongue of the humans. These dragons were very knowledgeable. “Dragon horde will accompany wolves to battle.”
“I do not understand how a wolf could speak to a dragon and convince it to fight for it!” Titus said to Zachery.
“Whatever the reason, we should listen,” Zachery replied and stood up. “Avyrus, and Tairek, would be disappointed if we didn’t.”
“So you are willing to give up Dragomir’s army and rely on a wolf pack instead?”
“It sounds crazy but it isn’t!” Zachery retorted, turning around to face the amber eyed druid. “My father would not have received word of the prophecy if it were not true! Deal with it!”
The sound of many wings came into earshot and all of a sudden the wind nearly threw some of the knights off the horses.
“There are more dragons!” The captain yelled with horror, riding up to Titus and Zachery. “I am sorry but my men cannot help you! We have not even left our city yet and we come across dragons. It is a bad omen!”
“They not hurt you,” Sky Wing attempted to reassure the knight captain, but it was too late. He was already gone along with the rest of the knights, retreating back into the city of Windstorm.
“Well, now that you’ve scared away our only way of winning the battle against Xanthus, we may as well give up,” Titus said to Zachery.
Didn’t he just say that he believed Sascha would save the druids? Akemi let out a very quiet frustrated growl.
“First of all, how many times do I have to tell you?” Zachery sighed with annoyance and grabbed his horse’s reins and patted its nose to comfort it. “Second, didn’t you promise a certain woman that you would return for her?”
“N-none of your business...!” Titus stammered in reply.
“The white wolf defeat Harloc the evil Ituic Dragon,” Kuro explained, ignoring the bickering of the druids. “That reason for wounds. Then we go Aerulis to defeat King.”
“Sounds good to me, I guess,” Zachery commented. “How are we going to get there? I’ve had my fair share of walking...”
“Maybe we’ll become dragon riders!” Titus sneered.
Sascha ran up to stand by Akemi and looked up at Kuro. “Let the druids know that they have the plan right. If it is okay with you, Kuro and Sky Wing, then I would like you to carry Titus and Zachery all the way to Aerulis,” the white wolf-dog barked, flicking her tail excitedly.
She added with a chuckle, “So... it looks like they won’t exactly be dragon riders.”
And so Kuro told the two druids what they were going to do. Titus and Zachery were not too thrilled about being carried by a dragon one hundred and twenty miles through the skies at a very high speed toward Aerulis.
The dragons would be going at the speed of eighty miles per hour, and humans did not handle that speed well, especially with the hard stinging wind in their face. But was there any other choice? Akemi knew that Sascha couldn’t just leave them here, they were practically her family.
The gray she-wolf wondered if she would do the same for her own family members, like Strawberry her sister for example... and she decided that she would have done it. Her parents may be dead, but she would never have left her siblings behind. Zachery and Titus, the two druids, were of great value to Sascha.
And so, they set off once more. Titus and Zachery were carried by Kuro and Sky Wing all the way to Aerulis. The rest of the dragons followed, the hunger for the great battle seeming to show in their eyes as they flew toward their goal.