Chapter Eleven - The Dragon Keep

As they finished flying through the Sil ring, Noah could see very similar spires that the village he came from had in it. They somewhat looked like the stone spires between the Sil and Bernard rings except these were at least 100 metres tall, a black type of stone and covered in all sorts of ruins that Noah didn't understand.

When they got closer he noticed the trees of the forest under them finned out and the grass went from being green to a shade of brown and eventually dissipated leaving behind just dirt. Even the dirt looked like it hadn't had a drop of water on it in months.

They flew above the black barriers and were in the final ring, Edgur. It was very basic and much smaller than the other rings. The main thing that stood out what that the Dragon Keep was standing tall taking most the attention.

Noah could only stare up at it, now that they were only maybe 3 Kilometres away he could only appreciate the tower for its glory as hundreds of dragons flew around it and into giant holes in the sides. The higher up he looked the bigger the holes into the sides of the tower and the bigger the dragons were.

Under them, the wasted plains passed faster and faster. The dragons had seemed to unconsciously speed up trying to get to the tower faster.

The actual colour of the tower was a light grey shade, very similar to granite. The clouds looked like they were trying to push the tower out of their way but weren't even tickling it. Noah and Nereem who had never seen something like that were nearly as shocked as they had been the day they had first met the dragons in person.

All the riders had smiles on their faces seeing their home again. After Noah broke from the trance of staring at the magnificent building, he noticed that a few hundred metres from the Dragon Keep there was a large mansion. The Emperor's home. It wasn't as big as he thought it would be, it just looked like several houses stacked on top of each other and four houses wide.

The more he tried to stare into the mansion the more his eyes hurt, he started to see the shadows move closer to him. The feeling of dread filled his stomach. A sense of foreboding and danger just seeped from the mansion.

Isan had glanced down and saw Noah looking at the Emperor's house, his eyes widened, breathing stopped and he twisted Noah's head to look away. He could feel Noah trembling from just a few seconds of staring at the Emperor's abode.

"Do not look at the emperors home. You haven't been trained in magic and have no dragon to stop you from seeing into the abyss." He quickly looked at Sir Alan to see he had covered Nereem's eyes as they got closer. He cursed himself for not thinking of doing the same thing for Noah.

Hallan sped up and away from the others, wanting to get to the base as soon as he could to let Noah rest. He knew that Noah was suffering from looking into something that he didn't have the right to see.

He flapped his wings down powerfully and shot up a quarter of the tower to where the holes were finally big enough for him to land and get Noah checked out by a healer. When they flew through the hole they were one of four Dragon Troopers who had landed in there.

Isan jumped off Hallan with his arms wrapped around Noah so he could get the quickest treatment, there was always a stationed healer on the lower levels of the tower just in case something like this happened.

There was a desk near the exit entrance of the level and behind the desk, there was a young woman around the age of 20. She was wearing a cloak much like the dragon squads however hers was deep forest green.

Isan ran towards the healer and placed the shaking Noah on the desk which was at least double his length.

Noah couldn't control his body and was spasming so hard he was starting to rattle the whole desk. His eyes had turned black and all he could hear was the dying screams of the people from his village, seeing their deaths over and over in his eyes. His body was covered in sweat and he had started panting heavily.

The healer was panicking, she had never seen someone react this badly to the magic around the Emperors home. She started to move her hands up and down Noah chanting while she did so. The only reaction this had was Noah's eyes from turning black into a dark grey, barely changing back to his usual eyes.

Isan was so focused on Noah's condition that when he looked up after a few minutes of treatment when he did finally look up his eyes widened in surprise from seeing her start to shake from magical exhaustion, she was sweating buckets herself.

Cursing he told her to hold on just for a few minutes before sending a mental message for Hallan to go for an upstairs healer while he rushed through the lobby and down the stairs to grab someone else.

What were only a few minutes felt like hours for the healer. Her magical power wasn't infinite and she had never dealt with a person like this, she was just doing the best she could with what she knew. Which didn't amount to relieving Noah's pain by as much as she wanted.

Hallan was first to return with two healers from the upper level. They were in the middle of checking supplies when Hallan had landed and sent the mental pictures to them. One was an older gentleman with two streaks of white going through the sides of his short hair. The other was a middle-aged woman who could only be identified as a woman thanks to her chest and the portion of her face that wasn't obscured by her mask.

Both rushed over, as neither were Dragon Troopers and just mages studying in medicine they were a lot slower to reach the healer that looked to be on the verge of collapsing herself. She had bags under her eyes and when she saw someone else take over finally let herself fall to her knees.

The man knew exactly what had gone on just from the dark grey in Noah's eye if he didn't have just under 30 years experience this might have been a problem but he knew how to fix it.

He quickly closed Noah's eyes and placed a hand on his chest, warning his colleague that he might not have enough magic to completely recover the boy and to be on stand by. The man put his hand against Noah's heart and started chanting.

The other healer checked in on their fallen colleague. After confirming that all she needed was rest, she started wiping the sweat off Noah. He was covered, his clothes soaked through with it. His arms and legs finally stopped shaking.

Little by little, Noah was calming down. His breathing slowed, making him appear more at peace. The female healer put her hand under the desk for some medical supplies, one of them being an emergency pack of water that she could open and pour sips of water into Noah's mouth.

After ten minutes of this process and Isan finally returning with another healer, Noah's condition had lightened and when the male healer pulled Noah's eyelid back his eyes had returned to normal. Breathing in and letting out a great sigh he looked at the newcomers and his colleague, "If we had been any later this boy would be lost to the void completely, even with help from the young one there."

Isan's mouth dropped open, he had known the consequences of staring at the Emperors home would be bad but he did not think someone without magic would suffer so much so fast from just that few seconds he had gazed down on it.

This was his fault and he was sure it was going to cause problems in the Keep.