Dragons of War - Rising Storm

Chapter 18 (1/2)

Air whistled against my head. A string of dragons trailed endlessly of into the distance ahead. Their scales flickered in the bright and relentless sun.

The formation around me changed and Fred angled us down, lower than the rest of the dragons around us. With the rest of year one we filled the air directly below year two.

Above them, was year three, and so on. I couldn't explain the formation, I didn't even want to, but I was shocked enough by how well all the dragons seemed to be conforming to a set design today. Maybe they were as excited as I to finally reach our destination.

I thought that to myself too soon.

After only ten minutes in the air flying that way, and I saw two dragons break rank to swoop and swerve through the air. I didn't know what tier they came from, but I could tell by the way everyone else failed to react that it was normal. Not long after that, and the lines between ranks became blurred.

It had been only a week since my first day as an official Dragon Warrior in training. Every day I had experienced something new. Flight formations, battle poses and techniques. The diversity compared to that of a human was staggering, yet all of it seemed so... Easy.

Every day I learned something new. Who others in my platoon and year were. What they had experienced and gone through in training. Why they had become a Dragon Warrior. Why they wished they hadn't.

Yet the more time I spent among them all, the more I felt something I hardly understood.

The more I learned, saw, felt. The closer I grew to care and understand the Warriors around me. The more comfortable I grew within myself, and the new world I had entered.

The more alien I felt.

I wasn't sure if it was the age or the way others acted around me. Nothing seemed different, yet I felt it all the same. And while the question seemed to only grow in my mind, I knew the answer was not a simple one.

The question pushed aside, instead, I focused on the new day. Today, too, would be an experience. Or so I was told.

My group, and many others from all different years had set off into the open desert. With only sand below us, and an hour of flight behind, the Caverns were far out of sight. Earlier that morning, before takeoff, Fred had told me our destination and that it was a training exercise, but I still couldn't quite believe it.

With a bone structure that stretched high into the clouds and stories that stretched higher, the Skeletal City was something well known almost everywhere, and possibly the world.

Everyone knew the stories. How it was one of the biggest, brightest cities to light the earth. How it's structures were some of the greatest feats of man, and how the technology within made it a place of no night, or inconvenience. But the stories also told how that city was one of the first to fall. That it's height, so great, made it's crash to the ground that much more hard. The shockwaves enough to shake the very world.

The awe of such a place ever existing filled anyone with wonder. What it had once been, why it had fallen. All we knew, was all that was left of it, and all that remained were its bones.

Or so I had been told. I'd never seen it in person, until that day.

A sea of sand spread out below me in all directions. Countless waving forms soared over the ground as we flew. The shapes growing and falling with every hill of sand. When I lifted my head to the horizon, my eyes and breath, froze.

The haze of the heat and air made the shapes ahead of me fade away into the horizon. But what rose up high above it, looked like the very name it had been given. An eerie feeling crept inside me, at seeing the remains of what the world had once looked like. There was nothing in the world like it, anymore, and there probably never would be.

The entire formation flew straight for that city, right through the center. Towering structures and spires that were as thick as my whole body shot high into the air well above me. Some were cracked, bent or even melted off. As we passed a structure with glass intact, I turned my head and saw my white body shimmering back at me. The first glance at myself I'd ever seen, it took my breath away almost as much as that city.

My head was round, with spikes and quills adorning the back of my skull. I had few unique features, yet I couldn't help but feel as if, rather than lacking features, it was the perfect model for them to be added.

My glass reflection disappeared in a millisecond and the awe endless in that place, I was almost completely taken away by everything I saw.

Walls were shattered, torn and missing. Most of the buildings we passed had fallen to the ground far below. Others had fallen into each other and created arcs and bridges larger than life. Beams, wires and debris scattered the landscape. Pipes and poles, steel beams and cement blocks broke out and poked through the sides of the buildings.

I knew then why we had gone there. It was like a playground in the sky.

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