The Rider's Truth.

Payback.

Unedited.

Chapter 40: Payback

We had barely made it down the shadowed hall when Dem had an embarrassingly obvious idea. Like the oblivious young adults, we were, we had intended to just march through this mountain of hell to search for our friends when each of our minds were linked to souls settled on top of the mountain, who could pass secret messages for us that wouldn't be interfered with like our ear-pieces.

Nethore stirred instantly when I brushed lightly against his mind as to not panic him. He had held himself back, waiting for the panic to entrench me and now that I had opened myself up to him, he raced through the memories of the last few minutes.

He heard the words reverberated through my memory -oh little dove- and his cunning, clever mind came to a quick conclusion.

All of this had been some kind of trap.

"How would they have known you would be among them, or which squadron of soldiers you would be among," I could imagine the wicked talons curling into the stone. "It is no coincidence that he was near you."

"It can't be just a trapped laid down for me?" I mused.

I could sense him eyeing the doorway into the mountain, and his keen eyesight would be able to pierce through the dim lightening of that enormous cavern to find a hallway too narrow for him to fit through. Rage, like shadowed fire, built in Nethore's veins – he couldn't reach me in this hell-hole when it was a trap and that knowledge was enough for his thinly held control to snap.

The Vidalin loosed a roar so vicious, so enraged that the whole mountain went deathly still.

It's power seeped through stone and shadow so that we heard it even here. Every shadow jumped and shimmered in reaction to his rage and Jamie clutched my wrist in sudden fright. He was a maelstrom in my mind, darkness tearing through the bond as he imagined Amon in his mind's eye.

I winced at the feeling; it was like those hooked claws and razor teeth were shredding the ever-growing bond between us, trying to haul me back to him through the link in our minds.

"Nethore," I said as softly and as calmly as I could. "I am fine. I will come back to you."

I tried to show him images of us, a brush of contact gentle and warm. His mind was just feral, and I was reminded in stark reality that beyond Nethore's stubborn, but loving nature was a creature hatched as a dragon but crafted in shadow. The vicious nature of every dragon was to be contained, but even brushing against Nethore's mind now, I felt a well of such immense power that had he been older, and stronger, he could have torn the mountain from the earth.

I was strangely thankful that Nethore was as young as he was. He had time to contain that rage.

"You are coming back." He said in a voice that wasn't quite so young. It was deep and absolute. "Wherever you go, I go. We are not dying today."

I smiled as I imagined those broiling sea-blue eyes staring down at me. "We are not dying today." I agreed.

Easing away from the bond, I inspected the others. Jamie was deathly pale, and her fingers slipped from my wrist as she blinked at me. "I felt Nethore."

Buzz, skies above, even looked troubled. "Am I wrong to say that the shadows around us moved when he roared?"

"He's the Vidalin dragon." Dem as usual, had the answers. "He is a dragon of shadow. Be lucky you aren't the object of his rage."