***
Asher tried to remain focused, but it was hard. He’d lived under what was effectively house arrest the past day and a half, the last of what was supposed to be his leave. Unable to even leave the dorm, he’d never felt more like a prisoner in his life. As a dragon, he longed for the sky over his head as often as possible. So in effect, Blaine and Daxxton—the Academy Commander—had tortured him.
Now he was outside, but still grounded, and it irked him. He wanted nothing more than to be back in the sky. Instead, he was waiting there for the other two recruits, as he had been since the night before. Blaine had told him to report to the parade ground, the term for the broad swath of stone circles out behind of the buildings.
“Owens! Get over here,” Blaine shouted.
He spun to see the Senior Instructor with Zeke and Dominick walking out from inside. He hurried over and fell into step.
“Today, we’re going to work on formation flying.”
The other two cadets groaned, but Asher kept his mouth shut. He wanted to remain as invisible as possible for the next little while. Not that he didn’t want to protest, mind you. Formation flying was boring, and while it helped ensure that they flew better as a team, it was generally useless to a dragon shifter.
“Don’t make noises at me. You can thank Owens for this one. His dedication to a little rough and tumble fun while on leave is the reasoning.”
Asher stared straight ahead as Zeke and then Dominick glared at him.
“Let’s start with some wingtip drills. Shall we say, four laps?”
Nobody responded.
“Perfect. Five laps it is,” Blaine said. “Get to it.”
Asher clenched his jaw and moved away to an unoccupied stone circle and summoned his dragon in a fit of fury. The spray of icy darts was stronger and more powerful this time, earning him a look from Blaine. But since it didn’t hit him, he said nothing, though Asher knew he would pay for it in time.
The course they were to fly—staying in a straight line with wingtips practically touching—was a ten-mile loop that was strategically marked out to avoid any and all thermals. So the dragons were forced to work the entire time. And now they had to do it five times. It wasn’t as bad as the other day, when they’d had to do it ten times. As a warmup, all while staying in such close proximity to each other, it would be more than painful enough.
“Sorry guys,” he said as they lifted into the air in their improving but still clumsy manners. “A gryphon started insulting me, and I just couldn’t hold back.”
“Fucking gryphons,” Zeke said, and Dominick grumbled his own reply. “I probably would have done the same. Did you win at least?”
“I was, until the second one hit me from behind without warning. I didn’t get a chance to recover and beat them both before Zander arrived with several other Guardians.”
There was some more angry rumblings, and then they reached cruising height, about one thousand feet give or take. By silent agreement, Asher took the center spot. The middle dragon was always slightly in front, and thus did more work. As the originator of the punishment, it was only fair that he did the brunt of the work.
The laps passed by slowly, monotonously. He grew frustrated. This was easy stuff. He wanted to be learning more, to be working at harder things and generally becoming a better flier.
He wanted to try The Course.
The course was a five-mile-long obstacle course, designed to challenge one’s swiftness, agility, and reaction time. The cadets were not allowed to preview the course. They only knew what was coming next as they achieved it. So far none of them had made it more than a mile in. The twists, turns, loops, and other terrain obstacles—it was all close to the ground—meant that it was grueling, and they just weren’t up to that standard.
Yet.
Asher was going to get there.
“Done!” Zeke crowed as they finished the last loop. He and Dominick peeled off, heading down to the stones for more instructions.
Asher pushed on, banking to the right and descending toward the first part of the Course. There were large metal circles that the dragons had to go through, each marked in ascending numerical order.
The catch was, most of them weren’t big enough to go through with his wings extended. As he approached the first, he brought his wings in and dropped through the first one in a near vertical descent before snapping them out to the side and angling into a forty-five-degree dive. Wings in, and he was through the second, only to beat frantically as he needed to move up to hit the third.
He made it through the sixth, flinging his wings out wide as he banked hard to the left right away and then rolled onto his back before dropping straight down through the next loop, which took him down into a trench-like canyon. Now he was forced to operate in close confines.
This is where it got tricky, and where he’d bailed out at the end. The next series of gates had him moving in an upward climb to the right, until he was literally headed the opposite direction at the end. It required some sharp abilities that he had yet to master.
Concentrating, he hit the gates with full speed, a tactic he had not tried yet. There was time for a single course-correcting beat of his wings between gates, and then he was forced to snap them in and out in rapid-fire motion.
He cleared the third of five, tendons screaming as he rolled up and over, inverting for a precious second to help reorient himself. Four! Only one more to go. He’d never gotten this far before!
I’m going to make it, I—
A bolt of Electrofire slammed into his side, rendering his wing useless.
Asher didn’t think; he just reacted to the sudden attack. His wing drooped to his side, but it was too late. He snapped his other wing in, tumbled through the fifth hoop and rolled to his side, inhaling sharply. The familiar tingle of his Frostfire came to him and then, in a burst of sudden clarity, the feeling intensified to a level beyond anything he’d felt before.
A cone of Frostfire spewed from his mouth, tracking up the side and across the golden wing of his attacker. Still he vomited the fire at his foe, a powerful, unending streak of it.
Dragonfire came from the glimmering yellowy snout, slamming into his Frostfire with a massive force, melting it faster than he could spew it.
As Asher tumbled out of range at last, he got a complete glimpse of his attacker.
His golden-colored attacker.
It was Daxxton Ryker, Wing Commander of Top Scale Academy.
He’d just attacked the most feared dragon in Cadia and much of the shifter kingdom.
Oh fuck. Why is it always me?
Asher slowed his fall, watching as the golden dragon flexed its powerful wing and the coating of ice shattered, falling to the ground below. Some of it bounced off of Asher, but he decided against saying anything. Instead he continued to descend back to the cluster of stone circles by the Academy. He didn’t look over his shoulder, but the shadows on the ground told him Daxxton was pacing him.
He shifted back immediately as the gold dragon landed next to him. A frosty mist that flickered with electricity rose up around the dragon and then evaporated a split second later as Daxxton reappeared in his human form.
“Asher. What were you thinking there?”
He paused. Hot rage, fury, anger…he had expected that from Daxxton. The cold steel of his voice was anything but, however, and it cut through all the meager defenses Asher had been preparing.
“Sir, I just reacted to the attack and—”
“Not that, Asher. You were told to do ten laps of wingtip formation.”
“Yes sir. We completed the required laps.”
“Why did you not report back here with your fellow recruits?”
Here it comes, he thought. I’m fucked now. “I,” he hesitated. “I’m not really sure, sir. I wanted to prove to myself, I guess, that even after doing the laps I wanted a bigger challenge. Something more. After that, I didn’t think, I just reacted. Through the entire course, even when you hit me with the bolt. I wasn’t thinking, I just reacted to the attack sir. That’s why I made it as far as I did, and that’s why I fired back at you sir. I wasn’t thinking.”
It was the truth. Asher had fallen into a different sort of mental zone while moving through the course this time. Everything had seemed to slow around him, and he just knew what to do.
“Sir,” he asked before Daxxton could respond.
“What is it, Asher?”
Still the calm, unyielding steel that didn’t seem to carry any anger with it. He had to be upset though, but he was doing an impeccable job of not showing it.
“Do dragons have the ability to slow time? Or to increase their reaction speed faster than normal? While I was flying it was…different. I could almost see much faster than I was moving, and process those thoughts, so that I could make the proper course adjustments as I went. But I wasn’t actively thinking about it. I don’t really know how to describe it, sir.”
Daxxton looked at him oddly, then stepped closer.
“It is an ability,” he said with a nod of his head. “But few dragons are blessed with it. In fact, I only know one other.”
“Really, sir? Who, if I may ask? I would like to talk to them about it.”
Daxxton gave him a long look. “Me. And perhaps we will talk about it at some point. For now though, you need to shape up, and obey orders. You are going to be in a world of trouble when Blaine gets here.” He nodded at the Senior Instructor who was angrily walking over to them.
“But you did better on the course than any cadet has done in their first semester in over three centuries. And you not only manifested your breath weapon, but you were able to keep it manifested. You may have gone about them in the wrong way, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good work. So between you and me, we shall call it settled. But I cannot promise what Blaine is going to do to you.”
“Yes sir,” Asher said, trying not to jump with excitement.
No matter what Blaine might do to him, he’d just received high praise from Daxxton Ryker himself! He could live with more drills. He’d fly fifty wingtip laps if necessary. He didn’t care!
The only thing he wished he could do was to tell Quinn. He missed her, and wanted to see her badly. She had to be freaking out after not having heard from him in over two days.
He hoped she didn’t do anything stupid until he could get back to her. Which, he vowed, was something he would do as soon as possible. The taste of her lips came back to him then, and he decided he was going to see her that night.
Asher schooled his features into a neutral mask and turned to face Blaine to accept his punishment.