Book 3: Chapter 5: The Combat Trio
After the dragons sent back to the hive for healing, they now had enough to form a single diamond instead of the previous double diamond. Arthur placed Cressida at the point, with himself anchoring the position in the middle.
Two dragons flew on his direct right and left; a red dragon with the power of fire that, for some reason, bloomed into flowery shapes, and a blue with fine control over salt water. Holding the back line was an orange dragon who, like Arthur and Brixaby, did not have combat power. Instead, their specialty was to create lifelike, and sometimes tangible, illusions. It was impressive for a Common, though the orange could not pull the tangible trick often without exhausting herself.
"Cressida, lead the way to Freeacres," Arthur said.
With the pink pair leading the way, they flew over the city.
Dragons from all twelve hives were thick in the air, diving and throwing card powers to take out scourgelings in groups and singly. But the city environment worked against them, with countless places for scourgelings to hide and the winding, sometimes confusing, streets stopping people from escaping clearly.
Dragons with the Lobos patch and rescue groups from other hives were hard-pressed to lead people out of the way. Other dragons worked in teams to block streets before scourgelings could break past and spill into more populated parts of the city. Unfortunately, this often trapped those who were too slow to evacuate.
Cries for help drifted up from below.
Arthur grit his teeth, wishing he could stop and help. A small but selfishly vocal part of him also wished they dared to fly higher so he didn't have to hear these screams or see people being chased down.
But for all of the dragons who were helping out on ground level, there was an equal amount fighting scourgelings on the wing in the air. Going higher would make the entire formation a target.
Swallowing hard, Arthur looked firmly ahead and tried not to listen.
Meanwhile, the eruption continued without stopping. The cone had grown by a full third from when they had gotten there a scant few minutes ago, and its base had swallowed up entire buildings
"Do you think that a demi-scourge will erupt?" Brixaby asked. Unlike Arthur, he leaned his neck down and watched the streets avidly.
"I don't know," Arthur replied. "It's our job to secure at least one of the card stashes and keep that from happening. And if it does... It's also our job to help stop it."
Brixaby hummed under his breath, and Arthur was not entirely sure if the dragon was looking forward to that possibility or not.
It got better as they flew towards the edge of the city directly to the east. The worst of the scourgeling eruption had not reached this area yet. People were able to evacuate cleanly, but that didn't mean they were completely out of danger.
The formation overflew a pack of swiftly running scourgelings which looked like racing hounds with thin bodies and sharp heads. The beasts ran as fast as a horse could gallop.
As they glided over, the red dragon craned her neck and spat down. Bouquets of wildfire drifted down. When the fire touched the scourgelings, it twisted them up into living vines, thorn flames piercing flesh and burning.
"Permission to go down and harvest?" the red’s rider yelled.
"No time," Arthur called back. "Good job, though," he added, “You saved lives there.”
The rider shrugged, disappointment on her face that she couldn’t reap the reward for her good deed. Well, there would be plenty of other occasions to harvest scourgelings.
Soon, the cobblestone roads ended, and were replaced by gravel and then dirt, bordered on both sides by livestock farms. Finally, they came to rolling fields, some thick with harvest.
"Freeacres Estate is dead ahead," Cressida called out.
Arthur gestured sarcastically forward. "Oh, you mean that giant castle?"
"That's the one," she confirmed.
He figured that was it. It was easily the tallest building outside of the city. The tiny cottages and humble homes surrounding it were small, but their thatch roofs and simple gardens were well outstripped by their lord's obvious wealth. Not all of them were in good repair, either. It looked like weather and neglect rather than scourgelings.
The castle had four main towers, bracketed by equally large buildings on all sides. It looked like a place where somebody could easily get lost inside — and that was coming from someone who lived in a dragon hive.
"How much time left on the quest?" Arthur called out.
Joy craned her head to answer back, "Five minutes, thirty seconds."
They had traveled miles in those fifteen minutes, faster than he could have ever traveled with a galloping horse, but it still wasn't fast enough. They had only minutes left.
Arthur looked around anxiously, then scolded himself. It wasn't as if there was going to be a sign stating: Card Library here.
The cards were likely well defended within one of the buildings. Possibly underground.
Yet... why was there only a few minutes left on the timer? There was no sign of life. Only a few scattered sheep on the hills. No horses or goats or the shepherds to attend to them. Not even any herding dogs left to manage the lone sheep. Had they all evacuated already?
"That courtyard is big enough to land on," the blue rider called out.
Arthur nodded but didn’t give the signal to land. "Does anybody see signs of scourgelings? Do you see any people or animals?"
"I think the Freeacures are in their touring season," Cressida called back.
"What?"
She turned almost entirely around in Joy's saddle to give him a scathing look. "Touring season," she repeated with emphasis. "It means the main family are likely in a summer home in a more pleasant climate right now. That's what nobles do, Arthur."
Arthur internally winced.
Cressida still had not forgiven him over the "I'm related to Duke Rowantree" thing. She had not gone as far to ask to be taken off his retinue when they finally graduated, but she made it very clear that she was annoyed with him on several levels for the secrecy.
While their friendship had taken a hit, she usually remained smoothly professional during class and training time. However sometimes her lingering irritation leaked out.
He wasn’t sure how to make it up to her. So far, he’d just tried to give her space.
"Are we landing?" the red rider asked.
Arthur glanced down at the deserted courtyard, which was clean with no signs of anyone having left in a hurry. No sign of Marion, either.
Something felt off.
Instead of ordering the landing, he gestured with his arm for them to circle the area.
"Brixaby, I don't like the look of that courtyard. Can you check it out?" he asked.
Brixaby looked at him quizzically. "Check what out? There's no one here, which means the card library is unguarded," he said eagerly.
"I seriously doubt they left it unguarded," Arthur replied. "Just check the courtyard before we land."
Brixaby shrugged his wings and flew off Arthur's shoulder, diving down toward the courtyard.
He pulled up just before his claws touched the brickwork and buzzed straight up again.
"Do not land in that courtyard!" he roared.
The young dragons, who had been flying in a decent diamond formation, wavered and called out,
"What's wrong?”
“What's going on?”
“What happened?"
Arthur ignored them and waited until Brixaby landed back on his shoulder.
"My danger sense went off just as I almost landed,” Brixaby reported sounding shaken.
Shortly after hatching, Brixaby had partially absorbed a legendary time card, which gave him a useful forewarning sense. However, it rarely went off. Arthur suspected that the triggering event had to be truly dangerous, which meant that something wrong.
“Do you know what set it off?”
“I don’t,” Brixaby growled. “Only that whatever it is, it’s bad.”
Joy called out, "What do we do? We only have three minutes left."
Unexpectedly, Shadow spoke up. "Never forget to keep your eyes to the sky.”
Arthur glanced up and saw three dragons approaching in an arrow-trio formation: A silver in the lead, flanked by two fierce-looking reds, one of which was bristling with spikes that had flames coming out.
"I think we just found out why that quest is counting down," he muttered.
He signaled for the rest of the diamond formation to keep circling the castle. Meanwhile, he ordered Shadow to fly upward on an intercept angle. As the ranking rider, it was his duty to learn what the other dragons wanted.
As they got closer, Arthur got a vague sense of the strength of their cards. "A rare and two uncommons?" he asked Brixaby.
"I think so," Brixaby replied. "But those two Uncommons have their cores stuffed with cards."
This was definitely a combat trio, then.
Arthur reached down to touch Shadow's neck. "If we get in trouble, could you shadow teleport us out?"
"Only to another shadow, and the biggest one is by that castle. I'm told that it's dangerous," Shadow added, almost sarcastically.
"Well, let's not push them," Arthur said.
Thankfully, the silver started to slow his descent when it became obvious that Arthur was there to greet them. As all the adult dragons were of the typical body style—two wings and four limbs—they didn't have the ability to stop and hover like Brixaby did.
As a result, all of the dragons slowly circled each other as the riders spoke. It felt exactly as ominous as it likely looked.
"This castle and all its contents are now the property of Blood Moon Hive," the silver's rider called out. He was a beefy man atop a beefy dragon with glinting claws. Silvers were usually pure magic dragons, but Arthur had the feeling this one was combat focused.
"The card library, you mean?" Arthur asked. He saw no reason to play stupid.
“Call it what you want, kid,” the silver rider called back. "We are here on our Hive Leader’s orders."
“So am I,” Arthur said. “I’m Arthur, with Brixaby.” That name should get some recognition, at least.
"I'm a Legendary," Brixaby said, just in case they didn’t get it. "And that means I outrank all three of you. Now go away."
The silver dragon snorted, sending Brixaby tumbling end over end with a minor wind power. "You haven't even graduated training yet, hatchling.”
The flame-tipped red’s rider called out. “What's the matter? The kids haven't learned how to land your dragons yet?"
"You shouldn't go down there,” Arthur said. “One of our group members has a forewarning card. We have reason to believe that the castle is dangerous."
"Of course it's dangerous. We're in the middle of a scourge eruption. Stand aside, we have the rank," replied the silver’s rider.
Brixaby bristled. "No, you don't.”
"They do," Shadow said on a sigh. "You haven't graduated yet, and Blood Moon is one of the top hives. Wolf moon is, well, on the bottom."
“Thanks for that,” Arthur muttered, wishing Shadow had kept quiet.
The other red snarled. "Do you hatchlings intend to stop us?”
Brixaby growled and flexed his claws.
Arthur shook his head. "I'm warning you, don't go down there."
The silver’s rider seemed to have had enough. He made a quick chopping gesture. With practiced synchronization all three dragons folded their wings and dived as if they expected to be stopped by card powers.
Arthur didn't bother, though inwardly he was frustrated.
Yes, the castle had set off Brixaby’s danger-sense but he suspected that whatever those three combat dragons faced, they could handle it.
Probably some scourgelings lying hiding in the shadows, he thought.
They were on the verge of failing the quest, but at least the card library would be protected from the scourgelings. That was the important thing.
Surprised by the diving dragons the rest of his class in diamond formation scattered and flew to the sides to give the much larger adults room.
Either that wasn’t good enough for the silver or they wanted to really send a message because a gust of wind blew several of the slower sharply to the side.
The three dragons swooped to land in the middle of the courtyard.
And in the next moment, the entire castle exploded.
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