I swallow down my irritation. That was only a third of my list. I hadn’t even started on any of the illegal mods I favor or the discreet weaponry I was hoping to get fabricated if I asked really nicely.
Because you might be the threat that I need a weapon for,I think to myself, but I don’t say that.
“You won’t always be with me,” I argue instead. “And you act like this small contingent can’t be overrun. I need to be able to defend myself no matter what.”
Ogdan rolls his eyes, and both Chastain and Tove make annoyed little huffs.
“You’re not in The Scorch anymore, Frills,” Chastain counters. “All the bone blades in the world aren’t going to stop a dragon that wants to get to you.”
“Maybe not stop altogether,” I assert, “but they would slow them down, buy me some time to come up with a plan.”
“A plan to what? Die slower?” Tove argues. “Sorry, Syphon, like it or not, we’re infinitely better than a bunch of weapons that can’t do shit against anyone with scales. A weapon will fail you.” She looks around at the others, a wicked smile slipping across her face. “We…well, we’re foolproof.”
I shake my head as prideful grunts of approval sound off all around me. I swear if they start high-fiving each other, I will throw myself out the window.
I disengage from this pointless conversation. I’ve known far too many people who thought they were foolproof.
They’re all dead now.
The drakes tease each other back and forth, but I ignore it, my focus once again fixed outside the car’s window as my mind wanders elsewhere. An older sky craft drifts closer on the right, the movement catching my attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch it keeping pace with the lirocar, yet it seems careful not to pull up directly next to us as though it’s trying to stay on the edge of our periphery, unnoticed.
Curious, I look back at the vehicle. I can make out a male with floppy brown hair and a face of sharp angles in the passenger seat, but the sun’s glare hides the driver. I squint in an effort to discern more details about the male or the other shadows of bodies I can just make out behind him, but the sky craft suddenly veers into a far lane of traffic and slows like it’s getting ready to exit.
“What are you looking at?” Farrow asks, twisting in his seat to try to see what’s caught my attention.
“Nothing,” I dismiss, turning back around.
Eventually our lirocar leaves the airway, and I force myself to pay attention to the path we’re traveling and the buildings and landmarks around me. Mentally, I take note of things that should be recognizable from different levels of the city and at various distances. Like a sailor uses the stars to navigate, I’ll need to use buildings, sculptures, and unusual looking plants and trees to try to find my way through the maze of this cityscape if it comes to that.
Tension once again tightens my muscles and sharpens my senses. We drift down through the various stacked blocks of the borough, and with each descending tier, the city grows darker, dirtier, and more packed with people. The carefree chatter in the lirocar draws to a halt, and it’s clear I’m not the only one picking up on the distinctproceed with cautionvibe that grows stronger as we continue to dip into Paragon City’s depths.
Bright neon lights cut through the gloom of the lower tiers, advertising various businesses and entertainment establishments. The shops draped in flowers and the street markets of the city’s upper levels disappear to be replaced by packed, uninviting store stalls with windows and doors covered in a mass of crisscrossed voltage bars. Signs are posted on each threshold, singling out which Arcs they refuse to serve and warning any others what will happen if they steal or cause trouble within.
I’m all too familiar with being desolate and poor, but there’s a frenzied desperation and naked ruthlessness seeping through the cracks of these lower levels. It puts me even more on edge. The airways grow unsettlingly narrow the further in we travel, and my dragon stirs with discomfort. I don’t know how the wyverns are surviving here with no access to the sky. There’s not even enough room to shift or stretch their wings. Logically, I know it’s designed as punishment for their part in the rebellion, but it doesn’t make it feel any less wrong.
Wyverns rival dragons in size and ferocity. Few differences separate our kinds, which is why, in the past, we’ve often nested and prospered together. Anatomically we’re different: dragons have legs, arms, and wings, whereas wyverns only possess legs and wings. We’re compatible when it comes to breeding, but any offspring produced by a coupling always results in a wyvern birth, never a dragon.
However, the primary difference between us, the one that’s inspired the greatest conflicts between our kinds, is that dragons have been blessed by the Source with various gifts of magic, while wyverns have not.
Head to head, a dragon’s extra limbs offer some small advantage, but nothing that a skilled wyvern warrior couldn’t overcome. But going up against the gifts of a Burner, Channeler, Thrasher, or even Render when you have nothing but scales, teeth, and speed is a death sentence nine times out of ten.
A fact that’s always confused me when I’ve spent any amount of time thinking about the wyvern rebellion and how they targeted the Syphons. My kith was the only one with the ability to strip other dragons of their gifts. We could, in a sense, create a level playing field amongst our kinds, and yet, instead of using that ability to help advance the wyvern position, they tried to eradicate it.
Craith, Ren, Pier and the other wyverns that raised me always said that our kith was targeted simply because my father was king and the rest of us were the top link in the chain of hierarchy, but I always felt like there was something missing in that explanation, something that would glue together all the confusing, broken, senseless shards of that day.
We could find the logic in why the wyverns and sorcai teamed up. Each had what the other lacked—the wyverns needed magic, and the sorcai needed muscle. But strategically, attacking the Syphons and not the other kiths was tantamount to attacking a dragon’s head and ignoring its sharp claws, vicious tail, and formidable wings. To take on a beast and hope to win, you have to account for all of its lethal parts.
Ren always argued that the wyverns and sorcai couldn’t garner enough support to take on the whole monster. They hoped that removing the head would bring down the rest of The Horde. But that theory, like so many others us survivors tossed around under the stars of a scorched sky, had so many cracks in it. Cracks that the rest of us filled with the mortar of our own theories.
Because once the dust settled and the blood was washed away, it wasn’t The Dragon Horde that was brought low. After the rebellion, the wyverns were hunted almost to extinction and then banished to the deep dark recesses of society. The sorcai covens were pruned and brought to heel. And the remaining dragon kiths not only survived with barely a scratch, but they thrived, while any thought of challenging their rule was crushed under the weight of their might and then promptly burned to ash by the new Burner king.
It made the rebellion look like a front for a larger, more sinister plan. One hatched by none other than the dragons themselves and executed perfectly. Not unlike this plan to have me eliminated by a wyvern in the Wyvern Den. I should have known this is how King Noctis was going to play it. It worked so well for him the first time, why not go for it a second time?
“We’re here,” Ogdan announces as the lirocar settles against a sky dock that leads into a slate gray, windowless building that’s nestled between a row of other dark, sinister-looking buildings.
“I’ve seen prisons nicer than this place,” I observe flatly, taking in the corner shop across the way, the thin alleys between the tightly packed structures, and what looks like a lane of food stalls just down the way.
“Spoken like a true snobby dragoness,” Tove taunts.
