Dragon Aster Trilogy

30: YRI UNRAVELLED



Lintrance landed on the perimeter wall of Loki’s castle, before jumping down and unsomning to allow his Ancient to look around. “Loki!” No answer came back, and he began to worry even more.

After he had heard his brother’s psi cry for help, the dragoon had gone completely silent to match the strange and unusual silence that he had arrived to. Even the wind seemed to avoid touching the castle’s walls.

If he had half the imagination that his younger brother did, he might have thought that the dragoon had found an actual way to make this place appeal to real ghosts. Loki had built the castle to entertain his imagination, and he had caught his brother speaking to his ghost-like court on several occasions. But Loki wasn’t crazy—he was just overly eccentric like their late mother. Fortunately, he wasn’t born with an equal amount of courage to chase his fantasies all over the world.

Lintrance had intended to flee to the Suzerain Continent before the High Guard could catch up to him for killing Fevre. But the desperateness of Loki’s cry made him impossible to ignore.

His hands still trembled as he tried to make sense of just how, after so many years, he had managed to land a strike against his uncle like that. As much as he regretted the accident, Fevre had it coming. After enduring years of his ridicule, he would be one of several who wouldn’t miss Fevre. He didn’t care just how much of a lesser-dragoon it made him. He was too old and too tired to waste any more of his life caring about what his family and others thought about him. He had sacrificed enough for them all and never gained anything in return but more pain and loss.

Lintrance unsheathed his broadsword from behind him and looked at its silver-plated and leather hilt. He had tied Sybl’s necklace to it, as it brightened a fraction of his orange eyes with a reflection of light. He wanted to depend on Cirrus to look after Sybl when he was gone, but as he tried to find the crazy dragon’s psi, it returned with a greater fear to where she might be. Dammit Cirrus! What are you doing?

A harsh wind answered him as the dragon landed invisibly in the clearing of trees just outside the castle’s entrance. “Why are all the High Guard out looking for you?” Cirrus asked as he unsomned and began to search the dense woods by foot for Loki and Sybl.

“You have to find her by yourself. They’re not far behind me.”

“What did you do?”

Lintrance didn’t answer as he didn’t need to. Yri’s Nova of grief made the entire Torian Continent know exactly what he had done.

His eyes caught sight of a glimmer of silver beside the base of a tree. Lintrance went over to it and picked up Loki’s mask in concern. Cirrus took it from him and caught in hand its Threads to see where the kids had vanished to.

“Fleeing to the Suzerain Continent won’t mean they’ll stop chasing you.”

“You seem overly understanding of the fact that I just murdered your uncle,” Lintrance replied, as he watched Cirrus’ attention return from the Threads to focus on him entirely.

“Our uncle,” Cirrus corrected. “You killed him by accident, whereas I would have torn him to pieces on purpose. He was my father’s half brother, but it’s not like I pride myself in being in any way related to Dyaus’ side of the family. You, Loki and Cecil being the exception. A complete idiot could tell you that Yri never gave a damn about Fevre, where now she is suddenly acting out the grief of his loss as if her very soul’s existence depended entirely on him. It makes me sick to hear it and even sicker to think that so many of the High Guard would believe her psi cries at all.”

Lintrance couldn’t help but briefly smile. He hadn’t thought for a moment before Cirrus had arrived that the dragoon might try to subdue him, despite the logic of that being the right thing to do. But Cirrus only ever followed the commands of one dragon, and that was their dead Prince.

“And Simera,” Cirrus added, pinning the importance of his memory back to Lintrance’s psi. He could hear his thoughts through the weakness of his grief.

“It was never Fated for me to like our King, but if only he were here now. Heck I’d turn myself in just to get a closer view of him strangling the life out of Yri with his bare hands.”

“You and me both. But we’re not staying here. Loki is in the Eternal Waters and Sybl is under him in the Keol,” Cirrus said, as he let go of his younger cousin’s Threads that led from the mask.

“What? What the hell are those two doing there?”

“Might I borrow this?”

Lintrance didn’t get the chance to respond when Cirrus took away his broadsword and pulled Sybl’s necklace off of the end of its hilt. Then he gave the blade back to him, so he could tie it around his neck. “We can’t fly over or swim under the storm. It will be morning soon.”

“Then we fly higher,” Cirrus replied and somned into his dragon form as Lintrance did the same to follow him into the air.