Inferno Legacy: Loyalty of the Dragon (Book Two)

Chapter 29

Then suddenly the rider ripped her helmet off, revealing a gaunt face full of emotion and long blond hair streaked with purple. Her pale blue eyes were focused on Cody, as if seeing him for the first time. Cody felt his whole body freeze in such an extreme mix of terror and joy that he feared he would never be able to move again.

Then Pippi dismounted slowly, shoving her sword jerkily back into a sheath at her waist. "Cody?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper of breath.

In response Cody pulled his helmet off and stood carefully, leaning against Inferno's foreleg for support. Pippi seemed to register that it was truly him and her eyes grew even wider in her shock, and Cody knew that he mirrored her expression perfectly. Before he had time to react, the elf threw herself at him in a fierce embrace.

Cody squeezed his eyes shut and hugged her back just as fiercely, overwhelmed at the sudden appearance of a friend, when he had resigned himself to the fact that he would probably never see anyone he had known before again. After several moments, which seemed all too brief, she pulled reluctantly away. Cody suddenly remembered what had happened.

"You're...a dragon rider?"

Pipi seemed to remember for the first time as well as she glanced awkwardly at the purple dragon. "Um, yes, this is Thunder. And the red dragon over there is Rose, companion of Rebecca. You met Rebecca before, at the human town."

In response, a young girl about 12 years old with a freckled face and russet hair stepped out from behind a tree. Though it hadn't been that long ago that Cody had seen her, he noticed that she looked very different, no doubt the effects of being a dragon rider. She was quite a bit taller, her face taking more of the angularity of a grown woman's. Last he had seen her hair was dark brown, but now it was somewhat lighter and took on a reddish color instead, starting to evolve to be more like her dragon's scales. Instead of 12, she appeared overall to be a woman of 14 years or so, though as a rider she would never look any older. Beside her was a short but incredibly beefy wyvern, rusty brown in color.

"Oh and that's Dust Rust, his rider is a dwarf named Heddok," Pippi said.

"But what are you all doing here?" Cody asked in amazement. "Why would three dragons and their riders be wandering aimlessly so far from where you should be?"

"Where we should be..." Pippi said mournfully, looking off into the sky in silence, seemingly forgetting that he had asked a question until the sound of Inferno scratching the ground brought her attention back. "It's not just six of us...we can take you to our camp if you like, as I tell our story?"

"Mournful is leaving to bring the others of our patrol. They should all be here in a while," Inferno told Cody.

Cody pretended to ignore him, but sent a flicker of acknowledging thought to him as he nodded for Pippi to lead the way.

The elf eagerly took the lead, the others following after Inferno, as she began the story. "It was a while ago, I don't evil recall how long, but a short while after you left that the queen's second-in-command, Fril, if you recall, had a dragon hatch for her. Our people rejoiced at the first elven rider in centuries, and finally there was a rider from each race. But as time went on we saw less and less of Greenscales. That is Fril and Venom, as her dragon was named. Within a week every time she came to us it was with Micah, to bring dozens of us to the Cave of Hordes to see if a dragon would hatch for us. Rebecca snuck up there by herself when she was told she was too young to go, and so had Rose hatch for her.