Peter heard the blood roaring in his ears and felt heat suffusing him. His friend Jarnvaror’s hot scales had chafed at his legs on the ride over. There hadn’t been time to grab the blanket he normally used to prevent tearing, but at least it had been a short flight and he would just be sore for a day or so. The same would not be true of the mad knight standing before him and his dragon.
He'd been able to understand the dragons for as long as he could remember. They would call to one another from across the mountain tops, and he’d always known if it was a greeting to a fellow hunter, a call for aid, or even mating calls. Every noise they made, every twitch of tail or wing, was like words to him. Easier than words, he understood them better than any of the villagers. Especially the village girls. He wasn’t sure if they spoke the same language.
So when he was little, the first time he’d run into the mountains on his own, it seemed perfectly natural that he’d be able to hold a conversation with the juvenile wyvern he’d come across close to the village. The little dragon had seemed just as fascinated by human life as Peter was by the dragon, and they’d become fast friends. It took the village a while to come around of course. But eventually they did. Even when he’d met the other dragons and introduced them to the villagers. But he was always closest to that little dragon, Jarnvaror.
Jarnvaror wasn’t so little now. He was almost the size of a house, with wings that made him seem even larger. His scales gleamed, even as the knight’s armor did. The dragon hissed again. Charles reacted with caution, backing away. Of course, the dragon was really telling Peter he thought the lights pressing into his head were very annoying and he would like them to stop.
“Not sure what we can do about the little lights, Jarn,” Peter said. He agreed with the dragon though. Each wisp seemed to be pouring a different sort of boiling liquid into his brain. They all seemed to be fighting in Peter’s head for a place on top, and shaking his head didn’t make him feel at all less dizzy. He patted the dragon’s neck. “Although I don’t think knocking that knight into the ground would hurt.”
“Peter!” Peter looked and saw his brother rising out of the grass, running around the Dragon. “Be careful!”
Careful? Why would Peter need to be careful on dragon back? It’s not like he was about to take off again. Did he mean not to kill Charles? That was fair. Lord Richard knew about Peter, and he was probably aware that his nephew was insane, but he still probably wouldn’t take very kindly to Charles coming home charbroiled.
“Hey, Jarn,” Peter called. The dragon tilted his head, and one gold eye rolled back to look at him. “Don’t quite kill him. It might make some of the other humans mad.” The dragon snorted his understanding, then focused back on the knight. Who was… laughing. Well, Peter already knew he was crazy.
“You’re that boy!” Charles said. “I remember when you first came to Belmont with your dragons! I was worried about you then. Have you been my uncle’s servant this whole time? Were you one even before that?”
“I’m not really anyone’s servant,” Peter said. “I wanted to try becoming a knight, but Lord Richard said that would be complicated for me.”
“I’m sick of all these lies!’ Charles bellowed. “You’re all his men! Every one of you, a spy to make sure I never inherit! I’m done with this!” Even as the words left his mouth, the man raised his sword and charged.
Jarnvaror whipped his tail around. It was a casual strike for him, the sort he used to fend off aggressive smaller predators, like boars and bears. Charles stumbled to the side, but kept going. The dragon grunted in surprise, something along the lines of “huh, that usually works,” before bringing his tail around the other side for a stronger hit.
Charles caught the dragon’s tail on his sword. The blade edge splintered under the force of the strike. Charles skid across the earth, his feet tearing up the grass for several meters, but he didn’t fall. As the dragon withdrew his tail, the knight remained standing, his blade cracked, but more or less in one piece.
“Well that’s probably not good,” Peter muttered.
Jarnvaror hissed a curse about human’s, which Peter decided not to take personally. The dragon stepped forward, head snaking out, jaws open toward the knight. Ironhill held fast, lashing out with the damaged sword as the dragon came closer. His first strike found the soft flesh of the dragon’s cheeks and lips, drawing a thin line of blood. The second slammed into the dragon’s nose. The blade broke against the scales.
Roaring in triumph, the wyvern tried to bite at Charles. The knight reached out and caught the dragon by his teeth. For a moment they hung there, the mad knight and iron wyvern roaring at one another, a simple yell of meaningless defiance. Peter felt the tension in his friend’s neck as Charles tried to twist the dragon’s head to the side. The man was strong. But not strong enough for that.
A burst of fire shot out of the dragon’s maw. Not much. Not enough to cook the knight and melt his armor around him. Just a quick blast. The man flinched away, hands coming up to protect his face. Jarnvaror heaved himself up, working his jaw, and complaining about how irritating the man was, even as he moved forward to clutch the knight in one of his talons.
Without his sword, Charles had to rely on the same trick, grabbing at the talon as the dragon’s foot came down. Jarnvaror rumbled with a chuckle, leaping into the air, rather than trying to crush the man. The mad knight’s grip held, and he was dragged up into the air with the beast.
The dragon pumped his wings, hovering several meters in the air. The knight held on, looking for some place to take hold. The dragon didn’t give him a chance. He shook his feet, and the dangling night began whirling around, trailing lines of mystic light as the Wisps followed behind his head.
Charles lost his grip and fell to the ground with a thud. Before he could recover, Jarnvaror dropped out of the sky again, crushing him under the one talon.
The knight’s armor shattered, and Peter heard the man’s cry of pain. The dragon stepped back, examining his work. “That may have been a bit too far, Jarn,” Peter said. The dragon snorted. The way the man had been fighting, Jarnvaror doubted he’d killed him with just sthat.
A wave of dizziness and nausea crashed over Peter. Jarvaror quivered at the same time, stepping back from the unconscious figure. A sound filled the air, like the buzzing of a thousand beehives. Accept not. Some instinct in the part of Peter’s brain that was still able to think recognized that the only sounds now were the dragon panting and the light breeze through the grass. Great, so a thousand beehives buzzing between his ears. His head throbbed. And worse was the sense of pounding terror, as if his brain were trying to run away from his skull.
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He didn’t remember falling off the dragon. He didn’t remember hitting the ground, either. He just found himself, laying on his back in the tall grass, looking up as the dragon, backed away, head shaking, and grumbling. But he couldn’t make out what Jarnvaror was saying.
Anna was standing over him a moment later. She was silhouetted by the moon, but he didn’t know anyone else with that kind of hat. Andrew appeared next to her. He was carrying Maddie on his back, keeping her balanced with one hand while holding on to Anna with his other. He wavered on his feet, looking like he might fall down himself, even before he shouted to Peter. Peter heard the words. He knew they were words. But they didn’t mean anything. He realized he was starting to shake. Then Anna put her hand on his. Immediately the buzzing dimmed. Now it only seemed like one hive was inside his head. Joy.
“Are you okay?” Anna asked.
“Maybe,” Peter said. He could understand Jarnvaror again. The Wyvern was yelling for the noise to stop. He growled threats and please, babbling like Peter had never heard before. “What’s happening?”
“The wisps,” Anna replied. As Pete sat up, she moved, and he could see the five lights. They didn’t look like balls so much anymore as they did rings. Violent, spinning rings, rising higher and higher into the air.
“Oh, that’s rotten.” Peter breathed.
“Something’s wrong with them,” Anna said. “I don’t know what. Maybe something about how they were connected to Charles.”
“Oh, yeah?” Peter asked. “Sure this isn’t normal? Maybe they do this all the time when no one is looking.”
“This is serious Peter,” Andrew said. “What’s going to happen if—”
Peter reached up and yanked the others to the ground, shifting as much as he could to catch Maddie as she slipped from Andrew’s back. In that instant, a jet of fire shot out overhead. The dragon was spraying flames into the air, transforming the spring chill into a furnace. When it went into the grass, the blades didn’t so much catch fire as disintegrate into smoke and ash. “Jarn is pretty upset now, too,” Peter said. The other two rolled to look over their shoulders. Andrew had to strain to move while still touching Anna’s bracelet.
The wyvern had backed up a dozen yards and now he’d begun to spray fire in all directions. The wisps were moving closer to him, but he didn’t seem to see them. As he belted fire, Jarvaror cried that it wasn’t working over and over again. Or that it hadn’t worked, and they were still there. The note of insanity in the dragon’s voice chilled him.
“So, um… Anna, you think your magic touch could cure my dragon the way you did for us?” Peter asked. “I don’t think we can handle it if Jarnvaror goes all… um… that guy on us,” Peter concluded with a nod to Charles. More fire passed by overhead, and the group had to look away as it came near them.
“How am I supposed to get close to him?” Anna asked. “If he doesn’t torch me, he’ll smash me!”
“Leave that to me,” Peter said. He rose and passed Maddie back to Andrew. “You take her. Keep her safe.”
Andrew took the girl, almost dropping her. “Wait!” he called before Peter could take a step. “If you get to far from Anna, you’ll lose your shield against their influence.”
“Why? What’s she doing?”
“I have a Wisp helping me, too,” Anna said. “But there’s only one of him.”
“Neat,” Peter said. “Don’t suppose you could just send him over to Jarn, then?”
“I could try, but then we’d be totally unprotected.”
The dragon was roaring his fury as the wisps got closer. Peter didn’t like how little meaning was in those roars. “Well, someone’s got to be unprotected for a few seconds,” he said. Then he broke free of the other two and sprinted for the dragon.
It was a good thing he was expecting the swarm of bees this time. He was able to stay on his feet. He couldn’t hear anything else, and the dizziness came back. As much as he tried to run straight, he found himself wobbling to either side. But he kept his feet.
It took most of his focus to do just that much, so when the dragon sprayed fire, he stumbled under it more than dived to avoid it. The dragon had turned, so most of it didn’t come close to him, but the thought of ending up roasted was unappealing, and he wouldn’t be able to help friend if his friend torched him. He forced himself back on his feet, and kept moving.
The influence of the wisps drowned out all of his own feelings. They flowed out over him like a caustic river, burning everything he felt for himself away to make room for themselves. There wasn’t enough room inside Peter for all of it, and the influence formed a headache that seemed almost alive, trying to split his head open from the inside.
His thoughts were mostly gone as he moved to the dragon. But some part of him remained focused on the getting to the dragon. That part knew that if he stopped focusing on it, he would become just like Wisps. Just an extension of their rage and fear. The dragon was roaring ahead of him, slinking away from the spinning mass of lights. “Jarn!” Peter called when he was standing at the dragon’s wing tip. “Jarn, look at me!”
He wasn’t sure the dragon heard him. He stumbled away as Jarnvaror moved. The beast was backing away as the wisps descended. On their own, each Wisps was moving like meteors. But the group itself moved slow, and somehow that made the whole thing worse. Peter knew the dragon could leap into the air to get away if he wanted. He could disappear into the night before the swirly lights were more than fifteen feet off the ground. And still, the lights were inescapable. When they were this close, even Jarnvaror’s instincts were drowned out by the noise.
Peter made a final dash as the dragon lowered his head away from the wisps. With his head on the ground, Peter and Jarnvaror were at eye level. Peter shoved his face before one of the wyvern’s huge, golden eyes. “Jarvaror!” he yelled. He put his hands on the knobby ridges around the eye and yelled again. “Jarnvaror snap out of it!”
The eye turned away and refocused on Peter. For the first time, Peter understood for himself why people feared dragons. They eye burned with an irrational rage. “That’s not you!” Peter managed to squeak. The fire in the dragon’s eyes dimmed. Jarnvaror rose up and roared into the sky, shaking himself. He stepped in and curled himself around Peter, spreading his wings and forming a wall in all directions.
“That’s nice, Jarn, but I don’t think you need to worry about me right now,” Peter said. A low growl slipped through the dragon’s teeth. It was almost a mantra, as the dragon reminded himself not to look at the wisps. Peter wasn’t sure if that would help at all, but at least it was something that the wyvern was talking again.
Peter peaked out around the dragon’s wings. He saw Andrew and Anna coming closer, his brother still carrying Maddie. They walked cautiously. Peter beaconed to them, and they moved faster. As soon as she was close enough, Anna put her hand on Jarnvaror. The dragon looked at her and uttered a low warning. “She’s trying to help,” Peter said. “She’s a friend, like Andrew and Maddie. Let her in.”
Without saying anything else, the dragon shifted so the other two could enter his protection. Assuming it was protection and not futile resistance. Anna placed her hand on the side of the dragon’s neck, and gestured for the other two to put their hands over hers. When they did, the headache vanished. Well, got a lot weaker, anyway.
“Okay,” Anna said. “All of us should be good.”
“What about Maddie?” Andrew asked. “She was mixed up in all this for hours without protection. What’s going to happen to her now?.”
Anna looked between the brothers, then looked down at the little girl. “I wish I knew,” she said. “I think the fact that she’s unconscious is good. It might be like a bad dream. But… I just don’t know.”
“It would be really nice if you knew,” Peter said.
“I’m sorry!” Anna said.
“You didn’t do any of this,” Andrew said. “For now, we just need to focus on getting away from these things.”
“Good idea. How?” Peter said. “Because I’m pretty sure they’ll follow us, the way they just went after Jarnvaror. That’s a thing, wisps do sometimes, right?”
“How long can your wisp keep us safe in all this?” Andrew added.
“I don’t know,” Anna said. “I don’t know, and I don’t know! I wish I could talk to him. We could ask him what he was able to do.”
“Well, let’s try,” Peter said. He bent down and shouted at Anna’s bracelet. “Hey! We could use some help out here with some of your friends!”
“Stop messing around,” Andrew said. “This isn’t—”
All three of them, and even the dragon, shuddered as an impression forced its way out of the bracelet. It came as an emotion, but not one Peter was able to put a name to. Peter could only describe it as Help friends! It rolled into them and through them. Anna’s bracelet burst with blue smoke as a shining wisp popped out.
The group stared, transfixed as the wisp floated up between the dragon’s wings, rushing for the other wisps.
“This can’t be good,” Andrew muttered, as the blue wisp lodged itself in the center of the other five.