Felix dipped the leading edge of his tail wings as he stretched his main wings to full length. His tail sank, tipping his main wings up slightly, preventing an embarrassing and possibly lethal faceplant into the forest floor. A gust of wind struck him from the left, but the leathery sails of skin attached to his spine spikes caught, preventing a side-slip. He slammed his main wings against his body, thrusting his head up and forward. The resulting gust of wind tore at the golden branches below.

Just ahead, above the autumn carpet, another draconic paladin struggled to stay aloft. It was a blue drake, an enemy in shapeshifted form. An inexperienced one, Felix observed. Inexperienced, but strong. Strong enough to immediately indicate that a head-to-tail circle would be a bad idea.

No, Felix could not risk being lapped. He needed to use finesse.

Felix twisted slightly, filling his spine-sails. The horizon began to rotate, and with it, one wing began to rise while the other dipped. The enemy drake twitched his head. Felix caught a glimpse of a glowing blue eye. Spotted. Immediate reaction. Panicked flapping of wings for altitude, accompanied by violent gyrations of the tail. Inexperienced indeed. It was a feedback loop, the Lord Paladin had said, and there was an easy trick to prevent it. Felix flapped his own wings in time, but skillfully avoided the same gyrations using measured changes to his spine sails.

A head-to-head circle would be much safer than a head-to-tail circle. Felix knew how to roll over fire breath, and he knew how to prevent adverse yaw while doing so. It was possible that his opponent was executing a skilled hustle, but Felix doubted that was the case. Felix would either end up slightly above and behind his enemy, and then rip into his wings with a stream of fire, or more likely, the blue drake would panic.

Felix thrust forward. The enemy drake did the same. Their nose-cones intersected. Felix rolled. His opponent did not, opting instead to strike out with a stream of fire.

The blinding azure light raced past in a torrent, almost exactly where Felix had been before his roll. The heat created a jet-wash, sucking inward into a vortex of smokey air, but Felix was unaffected. Too slow, he thought. Nearly vertical, Felix had very little lift under his wings, but his spine sails could be used to control "pitch" at that angle. He pitched his nose "down" toward the horizon using only his spine sails and then rolled inverted using his main wings. He continued a very slow roll over the enemy drake, without changing the angle of his head. His wings inverted inward, an awkward feeling that most novices could not endure.

The enemy drake recovered, but fractions of a second behind. Felix was still moving very fast, and the enemy flapped his wings a few times to gain speed. Energy and momentum, Felix had been taught, were the keys to winning a fight. Felix had been taught that each time a drake rotated his head out-of-plane for a fire breath attack, he slowed down by an unrecoverable amount.

This, of course, could be exploited.

The blue drake abandoned all semblance of circular energy, and instead flapped his wings in an almost stationary position, rotating his head around to breathe fire into the sky. This was, of course, complete madness. His nose cone was moving orders of magnitude slower than Felix was flying, and Felix pointed his neck and wings straight up into the sky, trading energy for altitude.

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The blue drake began to flap his wings furiously to give chase. The gyrations returned.

Using the full power of his spine-sails, twisting his tail ninety-degrees and flexing his tail wings, while keeping his main wings almost perfectly straight, Felix executed the most insulting maneuver he could possibly imagine. He entered into a flat spin in the vertical plane, blasting a lance of fire out of his throat as he did so, a burning crimson line that slid down like an executioner's blade, perfectly intersected the flight path of his blue pursuer.

Spine neatly severed, the headless corpse of a blue drake tumbled, bathed in fire, into the sunset forest. The shapeshifting wore off, and the drake's body disintegrated. The human body vanished.

Felix allowed his flat spin to continue until his head was facing the ground. He straightened his spine, halting the rotation, and took advantage of gravity to gain airspeed as he fell vertically. A smooth twist of his tail wings brought his head up to the horizon once more.

And there, on the horizon, a brilliant purple flash of light nearly blinded him.

Felix glanced around. The other draconic paladins were all around him, engaged in circles with the enemy. His red allies seemed to be winning, which made perfect sense considering the intensity of the Lord Paladin's training, compared to the obvious inexperience of the enemy. With what could be interpreted as a shrug, Felix ducked down and began to glide just over the treetops, in the direction of that purple light.

In a valley between two mountains, bathed in the copper light of dusk and the golden light of autumn trees, Felix found a clearing with a small wooden cottage. With a motion reserved for emergencies, Felix flattened his wings vertically, dumping all airspeed, and crashed onto the cobblestone road in the clearing, crushing a wooden signpost underfoot.

At short distances, it was difficult to see straight ahead because of the wide space between his eyes. The red drake form was useful for spotting things while flying, but there was a blind spot that could only be remedied with rapid side-to-side movements of the neck and head. The small figure that stood before him was too blurry to make out. Dark, somewhat tall, and definitely female. A civilian, perhaps.

Felix sembled into his human form. His boots kicked up a cloud of powder from the shattered cobblestones as his semblance completed. He opened his eyes to face the civilian in the clearing.

Tall. Very, very tall. Looming over him at nearly eight feet tall, the woman looked down on him with a comforting smile. Her hair was purple, and her eyes were hidden behind a dark-gray, solid steel mask.

"You fly well," the woman said. Her voice sounded young, but...

Felix trembled. Dwarfed by the massive creature, he gained a sudden awareness. This woman is a dragon. A real dragon. It was as if he had made a mistake in his maneuvers, and a lance of fire was about to sever his spine. The shock and fear he felt must have shown in his eyes, because the woman sighed.

"I did not intend to frighten you, whelp-child," she said, with a voice like honey. "Forgive me. I have traveled very far to reach this land. You have drawn my attention with how well you fly. I shall bless you."

With those words, power surged through Felix.

No, more than just power. Felix suddenly remembered the moment he took his oath to the Red Dragon. The vast power that filled his body and soul, the source of his draconic powers, was a feeble flicker compared to this power. Felix went limp, sinking to his knees in the pale dust of the broken road.

"It seems the people of this land are not accustomed to such blessings," the Purple Dragon said. She tilted her head to one side as Felix struggled to look up at her. She regarded him from behind the solid strip of steel that covered her eyes, as if it was transparent. "I have a need for servants, and you shall be my first."

"I am oath-sworn," Felix rasped. The blessing, the power surging through him, made it nearly impossible to speak.

"That is not a problem at all," she replied. "I will not demand that you break your oaths, servant. Now, let us be off. Follow now, for me, and with my blessing."

Like an invisible chain around his neck, Felix was yanked forward, into the wake of the Purple Dragon.