I still remembered that encounter vividly, but whatever communication had passed between us then, it hadn't been verbal. I'd sensed Onyx's wish for me to look at Ravel.
“Were you trying to match us?”I surprised myself by asking the dragon such a direct question, but then there was no point in trying to hide my thoughts from him when he could read my mind.
"Dragons do not play matchmakers," he said. "I just wanted to see if Ravel got the same impression of you as I had. He was impressed by your warrior spirit, and he felt a connection, but we both interpreted it as an affinity for a future rider. We knew you would be chosen."
I wondered if dragons adhered to the Precepts of Truth, and whether what Onyx was saying was factual or an attempt to flatter me. He didn't comment, because he either didn't hear my thoughts or chose to ignore them.
As we got closer to the Citadel, I could see that what had appeared a natural part of the mountain from a distance wasindeed a feat of extraordinary engineering. Massive stones had been shaped and fitted together so precisely that they seemed to have been melted together.
How had the ancient Elucians managed to build something so enormous at this elevation?
The dragons had probably brought up the building materials, but even that couldn't explain the scale of what I was seeing. The Citadel was almost as impressive as Elucia's port of entry, but the two hadn't been built at the same time, nor by the same builders.
"Not the same builders, but the same technology," Onyx's voice sounded again in my head.
It was unnerving that he was reading my thoughts and choosing which of my questions he wished to answer and which he preferred to ignore. I needed to learn to block him somehow.
"Will they teach us about this technology in the academy?" I asked Ravel, wondering if he was privy to my conversations with Onyx.
"No. It's a tightly held secret," Ravel said.
"From time before time," Onyx added. "When the currents could fly freely between worlds."
“What does time before time even mean? And what worlds?”
I got no answer for that from the dragon, but then Ravel shifted behind me, reminding me that certain parts of him were pressed against certain parts of mine, which was making me extremely uncomfortable.
"Onyx has a flair for the dramatic," he said in my ear. "Dragons' myths are recited in songs, and they are more poetry than factual history."
Onyx released another indignant puff. "At least our history doesn't get lost like yours. Parchment and paper decay. Songs endure."
Now I knew for sure that Onyx was full of it. He, as well as all the other dragons, had been hatched after the Second Extinction War, making the oldest among them only a little over a thousand years old. They didn't possess any lost knowledge unless it was encoded in their genes.
As a general comment, though, he was right.
Legends claimed that Elu had scribes recording important events, and that later the head shamans had continued the tradition, but those records had supposedly been destroyed during the First Extinction War, when Elu's temple had fallen into ruin. If we had those stories committed to memory instead of being written down, the survivors could have told them to their children, and the information would have been passed on.
As Onyx flew toward one of the massive stone protrusions that extended from the cliff face like enormous shelves, my thoughts scattered on the wind. Terror seized me again as the reality of where we were about to land hit me hard, shattering the modicum of calm I had gained thanks to Onyx and Ravel distracting me with their stories.
The stone platforms jutting out into the open air had no railings and no barriers. There was nothing to prevent a fall into the abyss except one's own balance and judgment.
"The supports extend deep into the mountain," Ravel said as if reading my mind. "They've held for thousands of years, and they'll hold for thousands more."
Had Onyx told him what I'd been thinking?
As the dragon flew toward one of these impossible platforms and started his descent, my fingers dug into the leather straps of the saddle. The platform was rushing up far too quickly for my comfort, and I was about to close my eyes and pray when, at the last moment, Onyx's wings snapped out, catching the air and slowing our fall.
It still felt like we were about to crash.
We landed with a bone-jarring thud that somehow didn't crack the stone platform beneath us, though I remained convinced that it should have. Onyx's talons gripped the edge of the stone as he folded his wings, and my heart lurched at how close to the precipice we were.
"Welcome to the Citadel, Kailin." Ravel started releasing the safety straps that had kept us secured.
I glanced down at the edge of the protrusion where nothing but thousands of feet of empty air waited. "Shouldn't we move further in, away from the edge?"
"It's perfectly safe to dismount right here," Ravel said.
I wanted to argue, but he was already swinging his leg over and sliding down Onyx's side with practiced ease. He landed on the platform and turned to me with an expectant look.
