Wings of Aether
By Christopher Faini

Chapter One

Most people considered what they were doing to be borderline insane.  After all, these woods were one of the many areas in the world where ‘monsters’ roamed practically unchallenged.  Supposedly, a traveler on this road had only about a fifty/fifty chance of making it through without getting attacked.  Sensible people would always ride on a fast mount so they would at least have a chance of outrunning whatever trouble found them.

Unfortunately they couldn’t exactly run away from anything without leaving their four wagons full of goods behind, and not everyone was even riding.  On top of that, all the noise they were making probably wasn’t helping matters either.  The entire situation was driving him crazy, and he couldn’t help but twist around on his horse and take another look at the caravan to make sure no one had disappeared.  

Everything was fine with the caravan; just like it had been the last ten times he had checked.  He couldn’t wait till this was over; he had been riding with this line of wagons escorted by a dozen guards for nearly two days now.  They were on their return trip from Thundeep to their home haven of Weald Refuge, and all there was between the two was miles of monster infested forest split by the seemingly endless ancient road that they followed.

At least it wasn’t like they were in constant danger, thanks to the caravan’s hired guards.  From what he had been told, most solitary creatures knew enough to not attack a group of a dozen humans.  That was most, but not all unfortunately.  Monsters didn’t care how many swords or guns you had if they were starving, and packs of them often attacked simply to protect their territory.  Though, many people believed that some creatures were somehow evil and attacked people just for the fun of it.

“Darion, focus less on our caravan, and more on our surroundings please.  It isn’t like one of the wagons is going to be snatched away without one of the guards at least yelping for help.”

Despite his mood and the situation, Darion almost found himself chuckling when he began picturing some giant beast randomly coming down and plucking one of the wagons up.  Instead, he forced a cough; Nash was riding his green and brown feathered plumebeast right next to his horse and probably wouldn’t be pleased at that reaction.  After all, even if this was his first time this far from home, he had seen enough from the haven’s walls to know that something just like that really could happen.  “Um, Sorry Nash, I just feel like something bad should have happened by now.”

Nash had been a member of father’s trading caravans for years.  At first he had been just another guard, but unlike almost everyone else who just went along for a few runs so that they could get a quick money boost from the job’s exorbitant pay, he actually enjoyed the work.  The danger seemed to mean almost nothing to him; he just knew that the trading was necessary in order for the various havens to survive and intended to stick around to ensure that it would last.  Father had recognized this, and eventually appointed Nash to be the caravan’s second in command.

At least, he had been the second in command.  Now Nash was practically in charge of the entire operation.

“Hah, I’ve told you before, it isn’t as if we get attacked by a set schedule boy,” Nash replied with a laugh.  “Sometimes luck is on our side and nothing happens, and other times we run into a few things.  We ran into a few forest naga on the way to Thundeep, and this time we might not see anything at all.”

“I know, I know,” Darion said with a sigh.  He had gotten all this drilled into his head as soon as father had told him that he was going to have to go on this trip.  The likelihood of getting attacked, basic tactics against each common type of creature, why about a dozen guards and four wagons was the most efficient number...

“Well, if you know these things, perhaps you should start acting like you know them instead of letting your mind wander?  Now that your father’s gone ill, you’re going to have to take ov…ah, bad girl!”  Nash suddenly yanked his reigns as he saw his plumebeast hungrily eyeing the neck of Darion’s horse.  

Darion reflexively made his horse back down a bit to get it out of reach of the other mount, but couldn’t help but smirk at the trouble the older man was having.  “Well, maybe we should get attacked soon so we can feed the plumebeasts before they eat the rest of our transportation.”

“Hah!  Don’t worry; Claw here’s a good girl.  Though, I’m sure some fresh meat from the locals would make her a happy beastie.” Nash said as he stroked his mount’s long neck.

They both laughed, but the entire situation just served to remind Darion of how much he didn’t like having the plumebeasts around.  Sure, they were useful as mounts, but in the wild they loved to prey upon cattle and occasionally humans.  However, they did have an advantage over horses: they were much more lethal when they fought back.  

Still though, plumebeasts were one of the stranger creatures he had seen; it was no wonder that many people considered them to be monsters.  They were like birds in that they were almost completely covered in feathers, had beaks, and walked on two legs but the similarities ended there.  Their body structures were completely different from any bird he had ever seen.  Their legs were many times thicker and more muscular than a bird’s and they didn’t even have wings; instead they had a pair of clawed arms which they could use to strike at prey.  They also had two meter long, and distinctively reptilian, tails.  In fact, their basic body structure, especially the way their spine seemed to be pretty horizontal to the ground all the way from their long necks to their tails, made him think of an exotic lizard.

One of their most brilliant features however, were the mane like plumes of feathers that grew from the top of their heads down to their necks, further enhancing their dangerous and exotic look.  Riding one was even starting to become a status symbol, though still didn’t make Darion want to have one as his mount.  Riding a two legged creature which might qualify as a monster was much rougher than riding a horse, especially when it was trying to kill things for you.  Their tendency to try to bite new riders also made him wonder if riding them really made you any safer.

For a few long minutes the caravan moved onward, silent except for the sounds of wagon wheels, hooves and claws clattering against the stone.  It didn’t take long for Darion’s mind to start wandering again, and he began examining the solid mass of rock that formed the ancient road they were following.  He had often wondered how it had been constructed.  It was as if they were walking on a river of solid rock which had been spread along the ground.  It was nothing like the newer manmade roads which were made by piecing together countless individual stones.

Supposedly, the old roads had been constructed ages ago by powerful humans who could shape the land, but Darion had learned to not trust all the old tales that were fed to him.  After all, if they could shape the land so well why was it so common to find roads that were broken apart or even lead right off cliffs?  All he knew was that they were lucky that this specific road was here and fairly intact, because without it there would be no passage for wagons through the woods surrounding Weald Refuge.

Just the thought of trying to make it through these woods to another haven without even a road made Darion shudder, he was sure that it would be almost impossible to make it even without wagons slowing them down.  Either way, having no road would have made things much more difficult for Weald Refuge.  These caravans were their only way of getting valuable supplies such as metal and certain kinds of medicine.  Also, swords and spears were hard enough for them to get without a mine, but there were also no gunsmiths to be found in their haven.  Guns were very hard to get and unreliable enough in untrained hands that many people relied upon longbows instead.  The longer the caravan kept going the better armed they would become.

“Keep staring at that road and maybe something will manage to snatch you away before you notice it after all,” Nash taunted after glancing back at Darion.

He rolled his eyes, “Yea, maybe I’ll tie a note to the back of my horse’s head next time to stop me.  It’ll tell me to pay more attention to the things that are about to eat me.”

Just before Nash was able to create his own comeback, a low whistle came from one of the forward guards.  Nash cursed under his breath and Darion winced; that was the signal that the guards had been instructed to give if they saw anything dangerous.  A moment later however, Darion found himself being amused by the thought that he had just successfully jinxed them all.

“Check your gun and signal launcher,” Nash said quickly before rushing his plumebeast towards the head of the caravan.

After spending a moment peering into woods lining the road to find whatever the guard had spotted, Darion readied his gun and the signal launcher.  The gun was a brand new one that he had been allowed to get during their trading.  It was handmade by a master of the craft, and was based upon a new design which had a spinning chamber with room for five rounds; a rather neat idea that was becoming quite popular lately.  It was definitely handy, since having to stuff powder and a new bullet into a gun for every shot was annoying.  The weapon was supposed to be to be a coming of age gift of some sort from father, but honestly he wished that one of the guards had it instead: he was a terrible shot against anything but a stationary target.  

The signal launcher on the other hand was the trade caravan’s ace in the hole, and Darion almost wanted to fire it just so that he could see what would happen.  Unfortunately, that would get him into a whole lot of trouble consider who was supposed to answer to it.  Darion pulled the launcher from its spot on his horse’s harness and quickly made sure that its primer charge still secure, just incase.  

After a few moments, Nash was returning to Darion.  “The man thinks he saw a glow-wolf’s eyes in the trees to the right,” Nash whispered in an irritated voice.  “It might be another false alarm, but go warn the guards in the back.”

“Glow-wolves, nice,” Darion groaned.  They were supposedly some sort of monstrous wolves which had appeared in the last ten or so years.  “You know, they really ought to be called shadow-wolves or something, since that’s what comes to mind when they’re actually dangerous.”

Nash snorted.  “They’re always dangerous, no matter the time of day.  Just because you can see them at night doesn’t mean they can’t kill you.  Now, go on.”

Darion sighed and turned his horse around.  Giving orders to the guards was awkward to say the least.  Though he was nineteen and practically an adult, he was by far the youngest person here.  The fact that Nash and father always picked experienced men meant that the next oldest person was probably twenty-five, and Nash was the oldest at forty.  How did father expect him to ‘pick up the torch’ and take over the caravans anyway?  He sure hoped that the old man would get better so that he wouldn’t have to do this at his age, if ever.

There were only two wagons in the back that needed to get the message passed to them.  The first one’s guards were traveling on foot, both armed with longswords.  They nodded grimly at the warning but said nothing.  Darion continued on to the last wagon, but before he even got near it, he noticed something moving near the edge of the forest right next.  The side opposite from the one they had supposedly spotted the glow-wolf on, and only a few meters from the last wagon.  He quickly readied his rifle and pointed at the spot in an effort to get the guards look.

The guard closest to the spot saw him and readied his spear, just in time to see what looked like a black mass of shadow leaping at him.  The glow-wolf crashed into the man, knocking him clean off of his horse before he could even try to protect himself.  They landed in a pile next to the rear wagon, and the thing tried to tear at him as he held it back with the side of his spear.  His horse reared up in surprise and tried to escape, but two more wolves leapt at it.  Their protective shadows hid what exactly they did, but the poor animal fell over like a rock.

It only took a moment for Nash to realize what had happened.  “Ready your weapons!” He yelled.  “Shoot!”

It took a few moments for Darion to realize that Nash was telling him to shoot, and he cursed himself for sitting there instead of helping.  He quickly lined up a shot at the center of the shadow over the guard on the ground, and fired.  At the same time, the rear wagon’s driver had stood up and started firing shots at the wolves as well.  The one on the unlucky guard cried out as a slug hit it somewhere, giving the guard time to push it off and stab it.

The other wolves had been trying to drag their horse into the woods, but bolted when they saw their packmate go down.  Thanking the Creator that he hadn’t accidentally shot the man and still feeling guilty for not acting faster, and rode over to the fallen guard to make sure he was alright.  

“There’s more to the right!”  He heard Nash yell, just before another gun went off several wagons ahead, followed by the sounds of men crying out and wolves growling.

“Dang it, dang it, dang it!” Darion practically chanted to himself as he tried to keep himself from panicking at the sounds of the fighting going on only thirty meters away from him, and focused on trying to help the guy he had almost just watched get eaten.  “Your spear!  I’ll pull you up!”

Luckily, the man was able to lift his spear up to Darion, who quickly grabbed the shaft and pulled him up.  As he helped the man over to the wagon, Darion nearly jumped as he caught the dead glow wolf’s body moving in the corner of his eye.  

When he looked, it turned out that the wolf wasn’t actually moving: the movement that he saw was from the darkness that had been covering the thing.  The shadows were disappearing, revealing a creature only barely looked like a wolf at all.  It was roughly wolf shaped, but seemed twisted somehow.  It was more muscular and vicious looking than any dog or wolf he had seen.  It had huge fangs, some so large that they were hanging inches out of their mouth.  Most disturbing of all were the strange pods which that grew on stalks hanging the thing’s back and the tip of its oddly reptilian looking tail.  Now that the shadows were gone, an odd light had begun emanating from them.

Darion quickly helped the guard onto the closest wagon and hurried to get over Nash.  However, he couldn’t get the wolf out of his head.  People had told him about them, but actually seeing one seemed surreal.  It was so strange to think that the ‘wolf lights’ which were becoming more and more commonly seen in the forest at night really were coming from the pods on these monster’s backs, that they somehow sucked the very light out of the air around them during the day and released it again at night.

There were a half dozen bodies scattered over the road now, though thankfully all of them were glow-wolves.  The caravan only hired guards who had wilderness experience, so apparently these men knew what they were doing.  Still, he could see several of the men had blood on them, and Darion could only hope that it wasn’t their own.  The guards were watching either side of the road now, apparently they had managed to frighten the pack enough that the rest had fled back in the forest, but how long would they stay that way?    

Still, he could feel a lump forming in his throat as he began to realize just how dangerous things were.  How were they going to get out of this without both himself and half the caravan dieing?  Father was usually the one who on every single one of these trips and was the one credited with miraculously keeping everyone alive.

“Bring the wagons together!”  Nash yelled.  Father wasn’t the only one who knew what to do in these situations, Darion remembered, Nash had done this dozens of times as well.

Quickly and expertly, Nash got the guards to pull the four wagons together, decreasing the area that they needed to defend, and then lined up the men and their mounts on either side of their column with their weapons ready.  

Thankfully only one horse out of the nearly a dozen they had spread between the wagons and some of the guards seemed even slightly frightened; father had mentioned once that he always made it a point only allow horses which had their fleeing instinct trained out.  Otherwise, they did more harm than good for their riders in these situations.  Their caravan’s four plumebeasts, however, seemed more excited than frightened. Darion wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, and eyed them cautiously.

Darion was relieved when he noticed Nash waving him over from his position in the center of the caravan, in between the second and third wagons.  This wasn’t exactly a situation he was used to.

“I want you to stay by me,” Nash instructed him, knowing very well that Darion was neither as skilled at fighting as the guards, nor was he even really supposed to be fighting.  “Keep your gun ready, but don’t waste the shots shooting at shadows unless you’re sure a wolf is hiding under it.”

“So, what are we going to do though?”  Darion asked while staring into the forest, trying to get an idea of where the growls were coming from.  “We can’t just sit here; shouldn’t we go and kill them?”

“Going out into the forest where they have plenty of shadows to blend in with is exactly what they want us to do right now,” Nash corrected as he surveyed the scene.  “We’re lucky that they didn’t jump us all at once earlier, otherwise we probably would have lost a few men.  For now, we’re going to wait them out."

“Wait them out?”  A frown formed on Darion’s face.  “I thought we were on a schedule, and isn’t it pretty certain that they’re going to just attack again?”

The lead guard nodded, and then grinned as he got an idea.  “You’re right, we can’t wait for too long... but you seem to be starting to get at least a general idea of how this caravan works, what do you think we should do?”

Darion groaned, realizing that Nash already knew the answer and was just testing him.  Father somehow had the idea that he, his only son, was going to have to take over this crazy enterprise. The problem was that Darion didn’t really feel interested.  Sure, it was important for their haven, but couldn’t someone else do it?

The problem was that father had become ill, too ill to travel, and now Darion was pretty much out of time to convince him to pick someone else.

He was half way tempted to try and give a stupid answer to make getting stuck with the job less likely.  Unfortunately, he didn’t like lying or making half-assed attempts at things, and he certainly didn’t like leaving the impression that he was an idiot.  If he decided was going to resist getting this mess dumped upon his shoulders, he was going to say it right to Nash’s and Father’s face.  In the mean time, he might as well play along.  “Well, I’m guessing running is out of the question, and you already said we can’t go out and kill them.  Hmmm, what if we could find some way to scare them, make them thing we aren’t worth the trouble?”

“Well, that’s a good start of a plan,” Nash replied after examining the answer for a moment.  “However, it is actually more complex than necessary.  Glow wolves are a little smarter than your average wolf, even if they’re more vicious.  If we’re lucky, they’re starting to realize that we’re not worth the trouble.  They’ll probably settle for that horse that was killed further back if we start moving forward very slowly.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Darion said, feeling a little disappointed that he hadn’t answered correctly.  “What if they decide to go after us anyway?”

“Then we’ll kill them, and we’ll get to find out if glow wolf meat tastes any good tonight,” Nash replied with a frightening grin.

Just the thought of trying to eat those things made Darion sick.  Oh Creator, he hoped Nash was kidding.

After spending a few moments being amused by the look on Darion’s face, Nash began putting his plan into action.  “Alright!  Let’s see if the glow-wolves have had enough, begin slowly moving forward.  Ignore the wolves unless they attack us again.”

For a moment a few of the guards whined that they weren’t going to finish them off.  However, they knew that Nash was right, and even if he wasn’t he was the one who controlled their pay.  The wagon drivers one by one had their horses begin inching forward.

It was difficult to tell how the wolves were reacting, or if they were reacting at all.  Darion wondered if the growling was quieting, or if it was just his imagination.

“They’re taking the dead horse!” someone reported from further back in the caravan.

“Good, leave them alone,” Nash replied, sounding pleased at the news.  “One lost horse isn’t too bad.”

Darion was about to point out that the horse had belonged to the guard, not the caravan, when he heard a loud screeching noise coming from the forest on their right side.  It sounded familiar, but all he was sure of was that it wasn’t the wolves.  When the sound came again, and he realized that it was almost coming from above them, not from within the forest, his blood went cold.  If that was what he thought it was, they might all be doomed.  

“All stop!  Weapons ready!”  Nash had heard it too.  “Everyone who has a gun or a bow, check the sky!”

Several whining sounds came from the woods on either side of them, apparently the glow-wolves were expecting the same thing they were.

A giant winged shadow crossed over the caravan, and Darion looked to see exactly what he didn’t want to see: a sky reaper.  It looked like a giant eagle, but with dark greenish blue feathers and a skull like head.  It was hard to tell how large it, was, but he estimated that it had a thirty meter wingspan.  These sorts of things were the reason why havens had to have guards armed with guns and longbows watching the skies all hours of the day.  He had seen a few of them get near Weald Refuge, and it seemed to take dozens of projectiles to bring one down.

His heart sank when he saw two smaller reapers following the larger one.  What was this, a mother taking her children out for a hunt?  And at this rate, they were going to be the prey.  That was just great.  They might have had a chance against one, but three?  Sure, the children weren’t as dangerous as an adult, but each of them was still as large as the caravan’s wagons without even taking their wingspans into account.

“Hold your fire!”  Nash cried out, maybe because he was hoping the things would ignore them and eat the plentiful wolf corpses which were on the road behind them, but too late.  A gun went off, and though its bullet didn’t appear to hit anything, it did a great job of attracting their attention.

The mother sky reaper gave a shrill cry and her children suddenly dove down at the caravan, causing the cold fear and worry that had enveloped them to explode into panic.  People began running about to either find cover or find a spot to get a clear shot at the creatures from.  Nash was uttering curses and retrieving his gun from his riding harness, since the sword he had been using before was useless against fliers.

Darion and several others fired shots at the fledgling sky reapers, but if anything hurt them they gave no sign.  The first one dove at a forward guard, but he somehow managed to dodge it at the last moment.  However, a man screamed as the second one swooped right along the length of the caravan.  When Darion looked to see what had happened, he saw that one of the plumebeasts no longer had a rider, and that he had been plucked clean off of it by the sky reaper.  Darion tried to not think of what was about to happen to the man as he was carried off.  

Several of the caravan’s members began ducking into the woods to avoid the other man’s fate.  To make matters worse, the second wagon’s driver thought to try and get away by himself, and began leading his horses around the rest of the caravan so that he could get away, nearly running over a few people in the process.

The wagon didn’t get very far however, because Nash rode right up to it, grabbed the reins, and growled something to the driver.  Darion couldn’t hear what the threat was, but considering the yelp he heard from the driver, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.  Nash then proceeded to try and organize a defense.  “Everyone, stay away from the forest unless you want to become wolf bait!  They’re still waiting for us there!  Those of you with guns or bows, wait until the reapers are as close as possible before shooting, those of you with melee weapons just stay out of the way and protect everyone else!”

Then Nash turned and pointed right at him.  “Darion, start sending up signals!”

Remembering that this was exactly what he was supposed to do in these situations, Darion dropped his gun and began getting the signal launcher out of the harness.  As he did so, he realized that the remaining younger sky reaper was diving down at them again.  

Moments before it hit however, a gunshot which was clearly more powerful than the others sounded through the air.  The shot was quickly followed by a sickening crunching sound, and the reaper went limp and crashed into the forest.  Looking back at Nash and the smoking rifle in his hands, Darion remembered that the lead guard carried what people called a hand cannon.  They were high caliber rifles designed to take down much larger creatures than normal guns could, and Nash had just planted a round from it straight into that overgrown bird’s skull.

The death of the first of the three sky reapers brought about cheers from the caravan.  Darion also realized that the other young reaper probably wasn’t coming back yet since it already had a meal, thought just the thought that another person’s death had kept him safe made him feel dirty.  However, they had a new problem; the death one of her children had made the mother sky reaper very angry, and after shrieking in rage it dived down at them.  Darion cringed, because he knew that it took a long time to reload a hand cannon, and Nash had their only one.  He’d be lucky to get off more than four shots a minute even under perfect conditions, let alone firing at a moving target while riding atop a plumebeast.

None of that would matter soon though, if they were lucky.  Darion aimed the launcher in the air and pulled the trigger, igniting the primer and sending a rocket flying into the sky.  It made a painfully loud shrieking noise as it went up, before exploding into a burst of sparks.  

If they were lucky, either the noise or the light from the rocket would get their help’s attention.  Unfortunately though, just one probably wasn’t going to be enough.  When father had explained how the signals worked, he stressed that sometimes several would have to be fired before they would be noticed.  Darion hurriedly yanked the appropriate saddle bag open, got the primer charge from it, and stuffed it into the launcher.  Then instead of taking the time to make sure the charge was in right, he began retrieving a rocket.

Before he got very far, there was a loud crash and a scream as the mother sky reaper’s talons crashed into the wagon behind him.  The wagon was too heavy for even the reaper to knock very far, but the impact still shattered it and sent its driver and much of the cargo flying.  The monster’s talons continued forward and narrowly missed Darion by mere inched as he ducked reflexively, but that didn’t save him from the debris that followed.  Pieces of the wagon hit both him and his horse, knocking him off the saddle.

He hadn’t been prepared at all for the fall and landed on his side, knocking the wind out of him.  For a few moments he just lied their moaning, distantly aware that his horse was running off.  When he finally came back to his senses, he remembered that he still needed to fire that other signal. Thankfully, from his position on the ground he was able to see the launcher lying nearby, still in one piece and with its primer intact.

Just the primer wasn’t enough though, and Darion remember that his horse had been carrying his two spare rockets.  He had just been pulling one out of a saddle bag when he had been knocked off.  After crawling over to and collecting the launcher, he began wondering what he could possibly do now.  

The fighting was still continuing around him, thought things appeared even worse now.  Several different guards were taking turns firing their respective guns and longbows at the remaining sky reaper.  Even Nash was firing away, reloading powder and bullets back into his hand cannon as fast as he could, but even after firing several the creature showed no signs of slowing down.  Either he wasn’t able to reproduce his miraculous shot from earlier, or this sky reaper was just too big even for that gun.  If anything they seemed to just be making it angrier.

Darion quickly surveyed the area to see if he could find his horse or his gun, when to his relief, he saw a signal rocket lying nearby on the road.  He had been pulling one out when he had been dismounted, so the rocket must have been knocked free as well.  He crawled over to it as quickly as he could, and stuffed it into the launcher.  Hopefully two signals would be enough to summon the help they needed.

Before he could fire it however, the sky reaper suddenly landed right in the mist of the caravan with a crash.  The creature was even larger looking on the ground: it was easily three times as tall as a person and almost took up the width of the road even with its wings partially folded.  This was enough for most of the remaining guards to scatter, but not before it bit one with its massive bone white beak.  

There was no point in firing a signal now since the mother sky reaper was right on top of them and eating them at this very moment, Darion quickly decided.  He tried to get up so he could take his chances and run, but fell back over as pain shot through the side he had landed on earlier.  

Another gunshot went off and the sky reaper shrieked in pain.  Darion was surprised to realize that Nash was still right there riding on Claw and was already trying to reload for another shot.  Nash really intended to fight the thing right until the end, and Darion couldn’t help but feel ashamed for even thinking of leaving the man behind.

The sky reaper however wasn’t pleased, and charged straight for Nash.  The lead guard finished reloading and lined up his sights with the monster’s head.  Instead of firing however, there was a grinding noise as the gun jammed.

There was no way he could let Nash die right in front of him; he had known the man ever since he had been a child.  He was almost like an uncle to him.  Darion quickly took aim with the only thing he had on hand: the signal launcher.  It wasn’t supposed to be a weapon and definitely wasn’t meant to be aimed in any direction but up, but that didn’t matter to him at all.  He yanked the triggering and let the rocket fly.

And when the shrieking rocket smacked the thing cleanly on the side of its head, he would have jumped up and given a whoop if he was physically able to.  His elation faded a bit when he saw that the rocket had neither imbedded itself into the creature, nor did it explode on impact.  However, its timed fuse still went off and sent sparkles flying in all directions before it fell to the ground and the combination of the light and the impact stunned the sky reaper made bring its charge to a grinding halt.

An untended side effect of the maneuver was that the area became flooded with smoke from the sparkles, and a crackling sound signaled that something had caught fire, probably one of the wagons.

Moments later a coughing Nash made his way over to Darion, jumped off of his plumebeast, and yanked him up onto his feet.  “You shouldn’t have done that, we needed that signal to go into the air,” he said to Darion roughly.  The tone of his voice made it seem as if Nash wasn’t sure whether he should be angry or thankful.  

“The signals won’t matter if we’re all dead,” Darion replied, and with the Nash’s help they moved behind one of the wagons for cover.  As they hid, he heard a crackling noise and realized that one of the wagons had caught fire because of the rocket.  He cringed at the thought of how much that was going to cost them if they made it out of this.

The sky reaper didn’t stay incapacitated for as long, and after spending a moment looking around in all the smoke it began charging at them.  Realizing that it was very likely he only had moments to live, Darion began trying to think of some good prayers he could before it was too late.

Before he could come up with even one, there was a loud whooshing sound from overhead, and the sky reaper made a long moaning shriek that he hadn’t heard from one of them before.  A sudden blast of followed, blowing all the smoke away.

When the smoke had cleared, Darion was shocked to realize that half of the sky reaper’s body and some of the ground around it had turned white.  It was covered in ice, and the shrieks coming from made it clear that more than just the surface of its body had been frozen.

“Oh thank goodness, she saw the signal,” Nash said in relief.

Darion looked up, and saw the most welcome and most beautiful sight he had seen in years.  He had seen her flying from a distance at times, and both father and Nash had tried to describe to him what she looked like up close, but none of that had prepared him for what Aurealith really looked like.  She was covered in icy blue scales which seemed to glitter in the sunlight, with snow white belly scales and bat like wings.  A pattern of five obsidian black horns spread out from the back of her skull, almost giving her the appearance of wearing a crown.

The ice dragon landed on her four powerful legs close behind the half wrecked line wagons, and turned her serpentine head around towards the sky reaper.  Darion was surprised to realize that she actually looked a little smaller than her opponent.  The monstrous bird charged at Aurealith, probably thinking to kill her before she could use her ice breath again.  

However, it was quickly apparent that the sky reaper had already been too badly injured to stand a chance.  Instead, Aurealith lashed out at it like a snake at it and clamped down behind its head.  There was a sickening bone crushing sound, and the lesser monster shrieked momentarily before falling over onto the ground, dead.

Darion could only stare in shock, unable to believe that she had killed the creature so easily.  How had father ever managed to make a deal with something so powerful?

The dragon walked over to the caravan in a manner that gave Darion the impression that she was bored.  She snorted a puff of ice onto the lone burning wagon, and then turned her great head to Nash and Darion before speaking in a surprisingly feminine, if powerful, voice, “This time you humans needed my help to kill an overgrown bird?  Unbelievable.  It is a wonder that you survive at all in this age.”