Thanks so much for all the comments! Updates will be more common from here on out, I promise.
I must admit, it makes me absurdly happy when people ship my characters.
On with the story!
Chapter 16
The warmth from the strange green room surrounded Aran, a lulling sense of comfort, but he couldn’t sleep.
At least Johann wasn’t having that problem. The other man lay with his head on Leath as a pillow, the direcore’s tail thumping every few seconds as he slept too, perhaps dreaming of flying.
Aran knew he should rest. But his mind was too full of uncertainties, the meaning of what he had to do.
What did it mean to be a mage? He patted Aurora’s mane while he thought. He had struggled with the meaning of what he was doing since beginning this exam. Just getting the title, bonding with creatures…that was important. But it wasn’t the only reason he was doing this.
His mother had brought him to the Keep to learn magic. But it was more than just learning magic, too. After all, not everyone who used magic, or even mastered it, became a mage.
Why here? Why a dragon? It still didn’t make any sense. What did Kelly know, or what had she learned during her exam, that Aran was still lacking?
He wished he knew why he still felt like a student rather than a real mage. Even now, when he had a goal in front of him, he still felt unsure. He was so close, but he didn’t feel it.
He realized with a sigh that the only time he had ever truly felt sure was his first year, with Aurora. After that he had just kept learning about all the things he didn’t know. Like now, with the blood mages, and the history of magical creatures. There was too much in the world to understand everything.
He smiled when Johann mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep. He would probably just say Aran was overthinking things. He probably was.
Aran leaned back against the stone wall, his legs out of in front of him. He needed to stop worrying about it, at least for now. He didn’t want to start his journey exhausted. Like he told Kelsay, he had to be ready. He would sleep, then he and Johann would prepare.
He closed his eyes, willing sleep to come. In his dreams, he traveled through snow, a formless creature he couldn’t identify at his side.
***
“I wish I had brought the skis,” Johann said. “But I didn’t expect this.”
“Skis would just weigh us down,” Aran said. “I intend to fly as much as we can.”
They stood once again at the edge of the frozen ocean, Kelsay, Kalien and the elder beside them. Kalien held out a bag of food, which from the way Leath sniffed at it must be full of frozen meat. Kelsay and Aran had already tied feedbags full of the seeds of the strange grass from the green room to Aurora’s bag for the pegasus. Another bag was full of butter churned from the milk of the nulorns.
“If I am right,” the elder said, “the dragon will be drawn to you. I do not anticipate your journey taking long. Range the frozen sea. Return if your food runs out, because there is none over the ice.”
“What about fish?” Johann asked.
“Aurora won’t eat fish, but that might help,” Aran said. It wasn’t the food he was worried about. It was his creatures. If the cold was too much for them, he intended to send them back here. There was no way he would endanger them for this. Aurora had more feathers to protect her from cold, but there was no food for her out there. Leath could eat almost anything, but he was meant for the warm jungles of Raza, not the bitter cold of a frozen ocean.
Then again, he wasn’t meant for that either.
“Alright,” Johann said. He met Aran’s eyes and patted him on the back. “Home before supper, huh?”
“I will send Shale to find you if you are not back soon,” Kalien said. Aran thought he detected a hint of actual concern in the man’s voice, but he could be imagining it.
“Lead them,” the elder said, and her ice phoenix leapt from her arm, frozen wings stretching wide. Leath followed it with his eyes, wagging his tail.
Then Aran and Johann stepped out onto the ice, white and cold stretching as far as they could see.
The elder’s phoenix squawked, flying higher, its voice a flat keen on the open ice. The open ocean. Bitter cold air washed over Aran, and he wrapped his scarf tighter around his mouth. The cold, dry air made his eyes water, and the tears froze immediately.
“C’mon, Aran, don’t slow down,” Johann said. The dark-haired man was as well-bundled as Aran was, and he spread his arms out like he didn’t feel the biting wind. “We’re on top of the world! Be excited!”
Aran had to smile beneath his scarf. To Johann, this was an adventure. Maybe that was how he should be feeling too.
When he had first started at the Keep, he had felt like it was all an adventure. A boat trip with his mother, and then Aurora, his new creature. He had his exams, safe, secure exams where his teachers would rescue him if anything went wrong. He learned about the world, about creatures and about his magic, and had dreamed about journeys like this one.
Maybe that was part of it. All of that had been just tests, puzzles, games. This was real.
Aurora spread her wings, as if testing the air. A query went through the magic band he shared with her—she wanted to fly. Leath barked, as if in agreement.
“Johann,” Aran called over the constant wind. His breath plumed in front of him. “What say we head up, and really follow the phoenix?”
Johann nodded. “Sure. Keep your scarf tight—the air will be colder further up, and right now its just on the cusp of being dangerous.” Aran nodded. Johann was his guide. For all his enthusiasm, he knew what he was doing.
Aran wasn’t the only one who had to keep them both safe.
Johann mounted Aurora, being careful not to dislodge the bags the pegasus had hanging from her saddle. Leath barked happily when they took to the air. Despite the cold, the wolf seemed to love the flat expanse—maybe he saw it as an invitation to go as fast as he could, where there no trees or other distractions to slow him down.
“Calm down, Leath,” Aran patted his direcore’s head. “We have to stay with Aurora and Johann. And the phoenix.” He looked up to where the fiery blue bird weaved in the air ahead of them. The phoenix flew faster when they took to the air, and wind whistled in Aran’s ears.
The snow below really did look like an ocean. It felt alien, surreal, like flying over a blank page. Even oceans had swells and dips, and color. The frozen ocean was just a featureless plain.
“Empty, isn’t it?” Johann shouted.
Aran nodded. Empty and alone. He didn’t like it. He couldn’t imagine anything, even an ice dragon, wanting to live out here.
With a twist of his magic, he bound the air between him and Johann. “This will make it easier to talk,” he said, and then sent a calming guide to Aurora when Johann almost jerked out of the saddle in surprise.
“MAGIC?” he shouted, Aran wincing, and then, quieter, “this is magic, so we can hear each other, right?”
“Yes.” Aran breathed deep, then coughed when the cold air pained his lungs.
“Fly lower,” Johann said. “This cold is dangerous.”
“Down, Leath, just…” Aran blinked, dizziness assailing him. The ground was white, and so was the sky. He didn’t know how low, or how high, he had to go. His heart thudded in his chest. Maybe flying had been a bad idea.
No. Think. “Follow me,” he said to Johann, and sent out tendrils of air magic. When they struck the ground, which was really water, he got his sense of the world back. Their small group flew on, a mere dozen feet off the ground to avoid the worst of the cold, fighting through the wind. The phoenix never faltered.
Aran called on his sense of water magic, shuddering when he realized the ice beneath them was inches, or maybe even feet, thick. Beneath it, an ocean waited. He wondered if anything lived under that ice, or if it was just too cold. Ahead of them, for all he knew, could really be the top of the world like Johann had said.
He shivered. It was so cold, and so strange here. Why had the dragon come here?
“Hey,” Johann said after what felt like hours, but could have just been minutes after their silent, featureless flight. Aran looked over at the bundled form of his friend flying on Aurora. “So, tell me about the Keep. Or something. This place feels so alien.”
Aran smiled. At least he wasn’t the only one disturbed by the quiet emptiness. He guided Leath closer, the two creatures flying wingtip to wingtip. Leath gave a happy bark.
“Well…What do you want to know?” he asked, uncertain where to start. “You visited it, right? What did you think?”
“Why did you go?” Johann asked. “What made you decide to be a mage?”
Aran thought back, filling his mind with images of the Keep surrounded by spring blooms, when he had first arrived. He gave a small smile at the memory of his mother, so grateful to be off the ship after their long weeks long voyage from Callisto. “I had magic,” he said, Leath’s ears flicking. “Strong magic. Nothing unheard of, of course, but enough that everyone in my hometown wanted me to go to the Keep. I would have been quite the nuisance otherwise.”
His smile faded. He hadn’t been back to Callisto since his mother died. He wondered how they all fared. His neighbor had been the first to recommend he go to the Keep, after a small stone carving project of his had scooped out gouges in her stone wall that had faced the sea.
Odd, to think he had lived by the ocean all his life, and his final exam had him flying over a frozen one like this. No motion, no tides, no life, save for him, his creatures, and Johann. And a lone dragon, somewhere in the distance.
“Kelly was kind of the same,” Johann said with a smile. “She would freeze things—on purpose, I think, though she claimed it wasn’t. And she always loved taking care of animals when she found them. We don’t keep horses here, though sometimes people would come down with reindeer, or dogsledders would come by from Trilvanth. She loved that. I did too.”
Aran nodded. “What did you do, after you came back from the Keep? I mean, life must have been nice in Arkene.”
Johann chuckled. “Not really. I took care of my mother.” His voice dropped, just slightly. “I helped out around town, and learned how to live in Arkene. When I got older, I guess while you and Kelly were training your creatures,” he patted Aurora, “I was learning how to hunt, trap, and ski. People in Arkene don’t do much else. Logging, too, though that never appealed to me.”
Aran didn’t know whether or not he should feel bad. It didn’t sound like a bad life—but Johann spoke of it as though it were tremendously boring. He supposed that compared to the life of a mage, it was.
“It must have been relaxing, though,” Aran said. “No exams, no constant pressure—”
“No one to help when I needed it, no magic, no creatures, and in winter, nothing to do except sit inside and stare at the walls,” Johann said. “You and Aurora and Leath are the most exciting thing to happen in Nyack for years. Everything else is weddings for people who aren’t me, or funerals.” The words stung, but Johann didn’t speak with any bitterness. Just resignation.
“I’m sorry,” Aran said after a deadening silence. “I guess…”
“Now you see why I wanted to go to the Keep,” Johann said. “I knew I didn’t have much magic, or any, really. But I wanted to see it. My family never had the money to travel, and when my mother got sick, that was it.” Aran wanted to ask what happened to his father, but didn’t. Johann answered his thoughts anyway.
“My father died in an accident—struck by a falling tree branch. Hence why I never wanted to be a logger like him.” Aran’s stomach flipped. “And I guess…even if I had magic, I wouldn’t have stayed. I had to take care of my mother anyway. So it’s not so bad. And now, I get to hang out with a mage. So it works out.” He looked over and grinned, scratching Aurora’s ears. The pegasus sent a happy sensation of contentment through her link to Aran.
Aran smiled back. “I’m glad you’re alright, after all that.”
“I mean, I suppose I'm doing well,” Johann said. “I mean, I do whatever is expected of me, which isn't much in Nyack. But since my mother died, and everyone my age is either married or has left..." he shrugged, a slow roll of the shoulders as he held on to Aurora's mane. "I guess I feel like I'm not doing enough, if that makes sense. To make my own life."
Aran nodded. He knew how that felt. He wondered why talk of death had come up at all—thoughts of his mother, and Johann’s parents. At least Johann had known his father.
Maybe it was because of the dead, frozen ocean they flew over. “I wonder what it looked like before,” Aran said, waving an arm to indicate the featureless expanse. “It can’t always have been like this.”
“Legends say Arkene froze over eons ago, long before Archex and Celeste traveled through. They say it used to be beautiful, a paradise, and then the weather turned and the glaciers came.” Johann shook his head. “Probably just the ramblings of old drunks.”
“Maybe not,” Aran said. “Clearly there was an ocean here, once.” Maybe it had even looked like his home on the coast.
“I suppose we’ll never know,” Johann said.
Aran wanted to ask if Johann would visit his hometown after this was all over. It would be a nice change for the other man, and a good way to show his new friend what life was like down south.
Of course, before he could ask, he had to complete his task. It was too soon to make plans like that for the future. Or maybe just too hopeful.
Suddenly the ice phoenix they were following shrieked, the sound sharp and piercing. It spread its wings wide, then flapped hard, turning into an icy comet as it flew faster.
“Whoa,” Johann said. “Aran, be careful. The cold will cut faster if we go quicker.”
Aran nodded, his jaw tense. “I know.” His face was already going numb. But he had to follow.
In the distance, something magic thrummed.
“Come on, Leath,” he said, and the direcore whuffed in agreement. With a flap of his wings that sent blisteringly cold air washing over Aran, Leath dove forward. Aurora pulled up behind them, Johann’s knuckles white as he clung to her mane.
“It’s been half a day,” Johann said, his voice blessedly calm in Aran’s ears even as Aurora fell further back. “Don’t use up your energy chasing it. Remember, we have to return, too.”
“I know,” Aran said, taking a deep breath of icy air that hurt his lungs. He wasn’t going to make a foolish mistake.
But he had to bond with this dragon. This test would end. Getting back would be easy once he had a dragon with him. He urged Leath on faster.
Ahead, the sensation of magic grew stronger. A black speck came into shape on the horizon.
________
TBC
Comments and critique always appreciated!
