Dragon of Legend: Fate (BK4)

chapter 7

Chapter 7 “Message”

Brandon was sitting behind his desk, staring down at a small wrinkled parchment before him, a thoughtful look on his face. As Akira came in he looked up. When he leaned back in his chair Akira realized that there was neither concern nor urgency in his eyes. She felt relief as she realized that could only mean that this was not an emergency.

“You called me?” Akira spoke as she came to a stand before Brandon’s desk.

Brandon nodded. His eyes trailed down to Akira’s boots and he frowned as he saw the mud that caked them. Akira shifted uncomfortably. She knew full well how Brandon drilled it into the students to keep their appearance clean.

He looked like he was just about to scold her when the door opened again.

“Ah, Seth,” Brandon spoke.

Akira turned ever so slightly to see Seth heading over and she furrowed her brow, wondering what this was about.

“I’m sorry to call you both so suddenly and so early in the morning,” Brandon began as he clasped his lands on his lap.

“Is something wrong?” Seth asked as he came to stand beside Akira, his eyes showing concern.

“I don’t think so,” Brandon replied as he shot a look at the parchment on the table. “An interesting message was delivered moments ago by pigeon.”

Akira and Seth shot each other a look. While pigeons were commonly used to send messages throughout the land from village to village, one rarely used them to send a message in this method to an academy where there were dragons around. It was well known that in these areas the chances of the message arriving at its destination was not high, for a hungry dragon would see the pigeon as not a messenger but a snack.

“It’s from the third Academy,” Brandon continued, his eyes watching both Akira and Seth for their reactions.

“The third Academy?” Seth asked sounding confused.

Altogether there were five academies. They were spread throughout the Lands, each covering a large area where riders and dragons from that region could attend it. However, during Haiden’s reign all but one of the academies had fallen under his command. After the battle against Haiden had been won it had been decided that in order to build up the academies once more they would be overseen by one of the five council members each.

“Why bother sending a pigeon when they could have easily sent a rider to do the job?” Akira murmured. It was logic that a dragon and rider could deliver a message just as fast as a messenger pigeon or even faster. Also, it would have been a lot more reliable.

“I don’t know,” Brandon sighed. “But then again, Silas always has had an interesting way of doing things.”

Akira frowned at the mention of the name of the council member that ran the third Academy, Silas. She remembered her first encounter with him well. Out of the five council members he seemed to be the one who disliked her the most.

“Are you sure it’s really from the third Academy?” Seth asked, as always he was considering all other possibilities, trying to analyze what was going on before taking action. It was one of the things about him that made him such a good rider and Akira envied him for it.

Brandon nodded. “I can assure you, this is Silas’ handwriting.” He held up the small parchment to prove his point.

“What does it say?” Akira asked as she squinted her eyes. From where she was all she could see was what looked like squiggly lines, too small for her to read.