Interlude (Part 4) - Quin and Isan

"I could feel the air rush through my armour and hair as I fell, I didn't have much magic left from the flare earlier, some of us aren't ridiculous powerhouses like you in our first few years. I barely had enough magic to send Leora a mind message to say I was falling.

She was panicking, she still had the other dragon on her tail and it wasn't letting up. I knew I would be fine even if I hit the ground, the necklace would simply protect me and knock me out and I would be a loss for our the team.

The specks in the air split up, one was getting closer and closer plummeting faster to the ground than I was. I could see a sparkle of blue behind the orange dragon, it's rider had their arms up in the air celebrating me falling off. Everything was slow motion.

Suddenly Hallan was on top of the other dragon, smashing into it from above and knocking the breath out of it, it could barely roar as it fell faster than me. On the back of Hallan, Isan had jumped off and was shouting something, a blue aura appeared around him as he fell; his arm reaching out towards me.

I was barely 5 metres above the trees when I saw him shoot forward all of a sudden and grab a hold of me, pulling me closer and wrapping his arms around me. Yelling into my ear not to let go; so I clung back to him and closed my eyes, waiting for us both to fall unconscious.

His blue aura had enveloped me as well as himself, the branches snapping back against us but not actually hurting us. I presumed that it was the camps spells taking effect but I was able to open my eyes and see Isan shouting at me to get up and run.

My ears had popped on the way down and I couldn't hear very well, but I got just the message. We both sprinted for a few metres and watched as the orange dragon collapsed the trees from above with Hallan holding his claws against the necklace around its neck. An automatic kill. No need for the theatrics.

The rider was nowhere in sight. Turning to Isan I asked him what he was doing here, he caught me up on how my squad saw two other enemy squads flying just passed the forest and into the west but instead of going all the way they just rose into the sky and hovered there as if they already knew our plan of an ambush.

Instead of sacrificing themselves the acting sergeant had sent two people to find Isan's attacking team, who were flying over a river in the south. By the time they had managed to fly over to them, they knew you must have attacked so we rushed over here.

Henry was in charge of the other squad and he was leading both his and Isan's squad into the two oncoming squads, although we did think the element of surprise was out the window now. he asked where Leora was but as soon as he said that I was suddenly crushed by a giant load of lizard.

I could feel her magic pour into me, recharging me and letting me talk to her without draining her magic anymore. It's strange how dragons can talk to anyone they want but it uses a lot of their magic to do so, dragons share a bond with the rider but it still exhausts our magic to purely talk like that. It's why riders just speak out loud.

If you haven't already noticed the more magic your body uses the more it exhausts itself, dragons are similar they just have a much larger amount of magic they can store and use but just like us when you store and use magic constantly it will exhaust you eventually.

I could hear Hallan's stupid laugh at us. Never have I ever, in all my time met a dragon that could infuriate you as much as him. Leora wouldn't get off me for a full five minutes, which is time we didn't have. Isan had to tell Hallan to push her off with his tale which you could tell he seemed to not want to do just in case she turned her wrath against him.

Leora may have been small but she had managed to completely win against the purple dragon that was chasing her, she recounted the tale of how she was chased around the forest and found a small area that forced the other dragon to slowly walk through before she turned back quickly and jumped and clawed at its head; smashing it against a tree and knocking it out cold.

Isan jumped onto Hallan's saddle and took out two blue potions, throwing one at me telling me to drink up. It tasted amazing. A mix of grapes and other fruits but best of all I could feel the warmth in my body return, the feel of magic particles in the air. I pulled them into myself and started refining them straight away just in case someone jumped out on us.

I got onto Leora and we both took off out the forest, flying straight up to see a huge fight between the two teams if we weren't wearing two different styles of armour there is no way you would have been able to tell who was on who's side, other than the insignia built onto the necklaces we wore during the exercise.

Flying side by side, Isan looked into my eyes, a smile from ear to ear shouting, 'To Battle!' letting out a maniac laugh and pushing Hallan forward faster than we could go, I just smile and Leora sped up as best as she could falling into Hallan's slipstream to keep up..."