Sky Riders: The Rising Sun

“Can you still hear me?”

Eliana sighed and opened her eyes. “Yes.”

Caelum frowned at her from where he sat before her, his legs crossed. “Eliana,” he scolded aloud, “you must learn to close your mind to other people. If your mind is open to anyone at any time, you can easily be killed.”

“I don’t see how it matters. Humans can’t read thoughts like elves.”

Caelum shook his head. “We don’t know the extent of human abilities anymore,” he said firmly. “There may very well be sorcerers who have the ability to enter minds like elves do. And it is more than reading thoughts.”

“I know, I know,” she grumbled. Caelum had been instructing her on the complexities of mental warfare every day for the two weeks she’d been in Amiscan. A powerful elf could not just hear someone’s thoughts; they could control them, both mind and body. It took a great amount of effort and magic, but it was possible, if someone could fully enter your mind.

“And anyways,” Eliana added, “I’ll never be able to learn to do this with you training me.”

He looked at her, confused. “And why is that?”

“Because…” she hesitated, then sighed, deciding she needed to offer him an explanation. “I don’t want to block you out of my mind. I’m… used to letting you into my mind now. It would hardly be any more difficult to shut out Oriens than to shut out you.”

Her words made him smile a little, and he shook his head in exasperation. “Very well.” He glanced around them and spotted a young, dark-haired soldier trotting past. “Ater!” he called.

The boy stopped and glanced back at them. His eyes were a very dark shade of purple. “Yes, sir?” he asked hesitantly.

Caelum gestured him over. “Come. Our Rider needs your help in her training.”

Ater looked surprised for a moment, then pleased. “Gladly.”

He turned and trotted back towards them, taking a seat in the grass beside his captain, facing the Rider. He had the lean, undefined form of someone who was very young. Eliana didn’t think he could be more than eighteen.

“How old are you?” she asked hesitantly.

He lifted his chin defiantly. “Sixteen.”

She nodded and didn’t ask anything further; she didn’t want to insult him. He was, after all, a man by both human and elf standards, if only just.

“Alright,” Caelum said, “Ater, I need you to enter Eliana’s mind. She’s going to try to block you, but don’t give up easily. She needs to learn to shut people out.”

Ater shrugged his slim shoulders. “Easy enough.”

His purple-black eyes locked on hers, and she immediately felt him trying to enter her thoughts—a firm, persistent pressure in her mind. She struggled to form a barrier around her mind, but after only a few seconds, she knew she had failed.

“Too easy,” he said in her thoughts, a smug grin on his face.

She narrowed her eyes at his arrogance. Of course, Caelum would find the cockiest elf in the army to invite inside of her mind.

Caelum noticed the grin on Ater’s face and the frown on Eliana’s. He sighed. “Try again,” he instructed, knowing she had failed.

Ater’s presence left her mind. She closed her eyes for a moment to recompose herself and tried to close off her thoughts. When she opened her eyes again, Ater was already staring at her. The moment she looked up, his eyes trapped hers. She strained to hold him off, feeling his prodding mind as he sought a weak spot in her mental defense. This time, the young elf tried for several minutes but, again, he broke though.

“Hello again,” he laughed in her mind.

She sighed in frustration and rubbed at her temples. She looked over at Caelum, prepared to make another bid for ending these ludicrous abuses of her mind. The expression on his face stopped her. He looked genuinely disappointed.

“Eliana,” he instructed wearily, “you must blockade your thoughts. You have to keep a constant barrier up—not just try to put one up when you feel someone entering your mind. If you let it down for even a moment, someone can get in.” He looked at the young soldier beside him. “Ater, let Eliana try to enter your mind. Eliana, I want you to see what a strong mental defense feels like.”

Ater nodded and looked back at her with a confidence that made her yearn to humble him. She locked onto his dark violet eyes and reached out to his mind. She was met with what felt like an impenetrable wall of steel. She frowned in surprise, and Ater smirked at her expression.

She continued probing at his defenses with determination. Everybody has a weakness, she thought to herself. There was always a soft spot in every defense. It was just a matter of finding and exploiting it. As she continued staring at the young soldier’s eyes, a thought occurred to her.

Cockiness was Ater’s weakness. He was certain of his victory over her. In a sword fight, she could have exploited that weakness easily. But how did it apply in this game? His defense still looked perfectly seamless. Then it struck her. An overconfident army would fail to guard their rear. In this, perhaps Ater would do the same.

In her studies of mental combat, Eliana had learned everything there was to learn about the mind’s capabilities. Caelum had told her that, when entering the mind, most would enter the conscious part of the mind; the conscious parts were where you could take control of someone. But the subconscious parts were just as vulnerable, and could be exploited if you were able to access them. She was certain that Ater—young and arrogant as he was—would never expect anyone, much less her, to reach for that part of his mind.

She focused her efforts as she probed along the wall surrounding Ater’s conscious mind. Then she reached the subconscious, and she smiled to herself. Just as she had expected, his defenses were not as strong there. With all of the mental effort she could muster, she threw her thoughts against the weak wall and plunged through it, entering the young elf’s subconscious thoughts.

A sudden rush of images flooded Eliana’s mind. Two elves—a man and woman—standing before an execution squad as a scream filled the air. The woods, streaming past her as she ran. A city of tall buildings. A beautiful palace. A pair of black eyes in a pale face. A pale hand reaching for her, clutching at her throat. Agonizing pain shot through her mind.

Eliana recoiled from the image with a gasp, yanking her thoughts from his. Once again, she was staring into Ater’s young face. But now, his dark violet eyes were wide with fear.

“H-how did you do that?” he stammered, his voice trembling.

“I… don’t know,” she answered slowly, still feeling the pale hand on her throat in Ater’s memories. She’d recognized that face, those eyes. It was the Dark sorcerer she had battled. When could Ater have seen him? What had happened between them?

“I won’t do this anymore,” the boy said quickly. “I’m done.” He jumped to his feet and ran off between the huts.

Caelum looked at Eliana, his expression surprised and confused. “What happened?”

She stared after where the young elf had disappeared. “I… didn’t know that would happen…” She explained her reasoning about Ater’s defenses, and how she’d entered his subconscious instead of his conscious mind. She then described the different images she’d seen.

Caelum frowned when she described the soldier’s memories of the Dark sorcerer. “The first two memories, I can account for,” he said after she’d finished. He sighed and shook his head before going on. “Ater’s parents were executed when Ater was barely ten years old. They made an attempt on my father’s life. They refused to reveal why, but we could only assume that they’d been working for the human emperor. The rest of Ater’s clan tried to keep him away during the execution, but he’s always been quick of foot and even quicker of mind. He slipped away from them and reached the field just as the archers performed the execution.

“After that, he ran—disappeared into the woods. We sent elves out to search for him, but they lost his trail, and there was nothing else we could do. He returned four years later, battered, bruised, obviously having experienced serious torture. I was the one who found him. He was…” Caelum paused and sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. “He was broken.

“I took him to Laurus. When she examined him, she said he’d been tortured with Dark magic. His mind was… ravaged in ways she’d never seen before. It was months before Ater even spoke, but he refused to say what had happened to him.”

Eliana was staring again at the spot where Ater had disappeared, sadness welling inside of her. The bravado made sense to her now. He’d been broken to a point that nobody should have been able to return from, and now, he was doing all he could to appear strong. And she had pulled those memories to the surface again.

“It was the Dark man,” she said quietly, certainly. “When I saw him in Ater’s mind I felt… pain, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Like a hot knife in my mind…” She shuddered a little at the memory.

“I’ll speak to him,” Caelum sighed.

“No,” she replied quickly, looking back at him. “I should do it. I was the one who… who made him relive that again. I’ve faced that sorcerer as well, even if only for a few minutes. And…” She paused, looking down at the grass, tearing thoughtfully at the blades. “And I know what it’s like to watch a parent be killed in front of you.”

She lifted her eyes hesitantly to Caelum’s face. He was watching her with sadness and sympathy in his blue eyes. “Your father,” he said quietly. “You never told me how he died.”

Eliana sighed and ran a hand across her face. “I haven’t talked about it since… since it happened.”

He reached across the space between them and gently took one of her hands, stopping her from tormenting the grass further. His gaze held hers, his expression earnest. “Will you tell me?”

She hesitated. The only one outside of Vegrandis who knew was Oriens, and that was only because he’d been in her mind when she relived the experience in a nightmare, as she often did. But what reason did she have to keep it from Caelum? There was none.

Slowly, she nodded. He waited patiently as she gathered her thoughts, swallowed, then spoke. “It happened when I was five years old. Earlier that day, I’d been playing with some of the other children in the street. When their parents saw, they were furious. They came to our home that night.

“They set fire to the house with us inside. I remember… I remember my father taking me from my bed. It was hot. There was smoke everywhere. It made my eyes water. He tried to carry me down the stairs, but we were trapped by the fire. So he ran into his room and bundled me in a blanket.

“There was a window there that faced away from the village. We had one friend in Vegrandis—Otium—and my father started yelling for her. She came to the window, and he yelled at her to catch me. Then he dropped me from the window. I landed in her arms. The blanket had fallen over my face, so I couldn’t see… But I heard the house collapse. Otium was yelling my father’s name—Tego! Tego! But of course there was no answer.

“He… he was gone. And from then on, I lived with Otium. She hid me for a few months before the villagers found out. I think the only reason they didn’t kill me then was because even they weren’t cruel enough to murder a child with their own hands. And after that…” She sighed and shrugged. “I guess they just got used to me being there. They tormented me when it suited them, and ignored me the rest of the time. And I just… survived, I guess.”

She fell silent, staring out towards the ocean. She didn’t want to look at him, to see the pity she knew would be in his eyes. She didn’t want to be pitied, least of all by him. After a moment, Caelum reached up and touched her cheek, softly turning her face towards his.

When she met his gaze, there was no pity in his blue eyes. There was only an expression of gentle determination. He studied her face briefly, his fingers brushing her cheek.

“I wish I had been there,” he said quietly. “I wish I could have protected you then. But I promise, I will do all I can to shield you from such sadness again.”

Eliana gave him a small smile and hesitantly touched the hand that rested against her skin. “What’s done is done. And though I only had him on this earth for five years, my father has been with me every day of my life. He taught me to be strong, to not be ashamed of who I am or where I come from. I have become the person I am because of what he taught me.”

Caelum smiled softly back at her. “He would be proud of you, Eliana. I know he would be.”

“Thank you,” she whispered back.

He held her gaze a moment longer, then looked away with a sigh. He seemed to grimace a little as he drew back his hand, and she thought she saw a look of regret pass over his features. Then it was gone, and he looked at her with a relaxed, cheerful smile.

“Give Ater some time before you speak to him,” he said, changing the subject. “He probably won’t want to see you any time soon. What you did was very clever, breaking through his defenses like that. He’s probably a little frightened of you now.” He laughed a little as he added this.

Eliana forced an amused smile, trying to forget the way he’d withdrawn from her. “A pity I can’t build defenses as cleverly as I can break through them.”

He laughed and stood, holding a hand out to her to pull her to her feet. “You’ll get there,” he said as she took the offered had. “For now, we’ll have to find someone else to help you practice. Someone who’s not deathly afraid of you.” He chuckled, then added in a murmur, “Though that may be difficult if Ater tells them what you can do.”

She sighed and closed her eyes, pressing her fingers to her right temple.

“Headache?” Caelum asked.

She nodded and looked at him with a sardonic smile. “Who would’ve thought that having your mind repeatedly assaulted would cause a headache?” she said sarcastically.

He gave a short laugh, then said, “Call Oriens and go for a Ride. That always helps you to relax.”

Eliana smiled to herself. He knew her better than he ever admitted. “I think I’ll do that.” She paused, trying to gauge his expression, uncertain of what his reaction would be, but she finally asked, “Do you want to come?”

His lips immediately pressed together in a line, and she regretted asking. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I have… I have things to tend to with the soldiers.”

She forced herself to look unaffected, acting like she believed him. “A captain’s duties are never over,” she said with an unconvincing smile.

Caelum’s responding laugh was just as forced. “Go on, now,” he said, nodding towards the hill that led to her quarters. “And be careful!”

She gave a dismissive wave at his remark and trotted through the opening and down the tunnel to the cave she shared with Oriens. She called out to him in her mind.

“Oriens! Come back to Amiscan!”

She could sense him shifting the direction of his flight, coming back towards her even as he asked, “I thought you were going to be training all afternoon. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “Caelum gave me a break. Do you want to fly?”

The only response the dragon gave was a surge of joy in her mind. After only a few minutes, Oriens’ great form blocked the light from the opening above the cave, and he landed heavily on the stone floor. Eliana quickly grabbed the saddle from a rack against the wall and tightened the straps around him before jumping onto his back. The dragon spread his wings and lifted them upwards swiftly, rocketing out throuh the top of the cave and into the bright sunlight of the late-autumn afternoon.

All thoughts of Ater’s memories and Caelum’s distant behavior were torn from Eliana’s mind as the wind rushed past her ears, stinging her cheeks. The feeling of sweet, unconditional freedom rushed through her as Oriens carried her higher into the sky. He climbed until the air began to thin, then started drifting lazily downwards, crisscrossing back and forth over Amiscan.

“Something was bothering you when you called me,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

Eliana sighed as her briefly-forgotten troubles came back to her. “Not my mind really…” she said. She repeated to Oriens what she had told Caelum about Ater’s memories, as well as what Caelum had told her about the young soldier’s past.

“Strange,” Oriens commented when she’d finished. He paused, and she sensed a serious thought forming in his mind.

“What are you thinking?” Eliana asked after a moment.

“You don’t suppose the sorcerer could have… manipulated Ater somehow? If his parents were executed by the elven king, he would have reason to turn against Iterum.”

She mulled this over. She had not considered the possibility, and she assumed Caelum hadn’t either, since he had not voiced this concern to her. After a moment, she shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I suppose it’s possible, but you didn’t feel the pain that I felt when he remembered that sorcerer. And Laurus said he’d been tortured terribly. I think he must have been lucky to escape. And besides, if he were working for the humans in some way, why hasn’t there been an attack on Iterum?”

Oriens gave a thoughtful grunt. “I suppose. Nevertheless, I think we should keep an eye on the boy. If he is not our foe, I believe he could use us as his friends.”

She nodded in agreement.

“Now,” the dragon said, “enough of this serious talk. Where shall we fly?”

She glanced around them and spotted the drop-off to the sea a few miles to the east. “The ocean,” she answered.

Oriens immediately turned in that direction, and they glided lazily over the land. At last, the cliff was before them. The waves pounded against the small, sandy beach and the rocks that protruded from the ocean’s depths, sending up a fine spray.

As they crossed above the ledge of the cliff, Oriens gave an excited bugle and said in her mind, “Hold on!”

Eliana leaned forward and held tightly to the straps at the front of the saddle, grinning as her heart began to pound with excitement. The great golden wings folded against the dragon’s side, and he turned his nose down towards the beach. They dropped over the edge of the cliff, speeding downwards with alarming speed.

She heard herself scream with adrenaline as the rock-studded surf rushed upwards like a churning wall of blue. At the last possible moment, Oriens snapped his wings open, jerking them into a horizontal position and leveling them out over the water. Both of his front paws dragged in the water, sending a wave of salt water up over his back.

It soaked Eliana’s legs and the edge of her tunic. She laughed loudly and leaned back, her hands stretched above her head, her face towards the sky, and gave an exhilarated shout. Oriens laughed deeply as well, weaving lazily from side to side over the waves below.

As the adrenaline in Eliana’s blood slowly seeped away, she sighed and leaned back in the saddle. She kicked her feet up onto Oriens’ neck, resting her heels above a spike, and linked her hands behind her head. It was a precarious position to Ride in, but she knew Oriens would not let her fall.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

She smiled contentedly, closing her eyes and breathing in the salt air. “Very much so.” She stretched backwards with her left hand, her fingers delicately touching the membrane of her dragon’s powerful wings. “I love you, Oriens,” she whispered aloud.

He turned his head slightly, catching her in his emerald gaze. “And I you, my Rider,” he answered in his deep, gentle voice.

They drifted peacefully in lazy circles, listening to the whisper of the waves beneath them, letting their minds mingle. Oriens felt the spray of the breeze on Eliana’s cheeks. She felt the warmth of the sun on his scales. All was right with the world.

Suddenly, Oriens jolted beneath her, jerking to the side as a stinging sensation shot through Eliana’s back. Her hands flailed out, grasping for a hold, as she tumbled sideways, slipping from the saddle. Her fingers closed around the saddle’s straps, and she frantically scrambled up onto the dragon’s back again. Once she was secure in the saddle, her legs tightened into the straps, she looked around for some disturbance.

“What on earth just happened?” she asked.

Now that his Rider was safely seated, Oriens turned sharply and faced the cliff behind them. “We were shot at,” he said. “An arrow tore through my left wing.”

Eliana glanced back and found a ragged hole in the gold membrane. The stinging in her own back was Oriens’ pain, not hers. Anger surged through her, and she felt a burning desire to punish whoever had attacked her dragon. She turned her eyes to the beach, searching for a target for her fury. She found it.

Three figures stood on the narrow beach, under the shadow of the high cliffs. They were shrouded in black cloaks, hoods raised, reminding her of that old nightmare again. Two of the figures lifted bows, sending two arrows speeding at the Rider and dragon. Oriens pulled up, and they hissed by below him.

“Get them!” she screamed with her mind.

Oriens roared, her anger echoing in the sound as he charged towards their attackers. The bowmen fired again. Oriens tugged his wings into his side and rolled away from the arrows before righting himself and his Rider again.

Once they were upright, Eliana fired three balls of flame at the beach in quick succession. There was a flurry of movement from the three figures as they avoided the first, then dispersed the others. She couldn’t see who had dispelled her magic, but she knew now that at least one of them was a sorcerer.

As she prepared to attack again, she felt a presence in her mind, sinking into her thoughts like a pair of fangs. There was no voice to accompany the presence, but there was no denying that it was there—ominous, silent, and powerful. She attempted to throw up a wall, to push out the presence, but it burrowed deeper into her mind. Pain suddenly coursed through Eliana’s arms.

She looked down to see her hands moving in quick, jerking movements as her fingers released the straps of the saddle. Her legs began to tug themselves out of their bindings on the sides of the saddle. Her body was moving of its own will—of someone else’s will.

Nausea turned in her stomach as she realized what was happening to her. The presence in her mind had taken control. Her body was no longer her own. She tried to fight against the vicious consciousness in her mind, but it pushed her back, pinning her inside her own head as she silently raged against it.

“Eliana!” Oriens screamed in her thoughts. “What’s happening?”

She was now leaning out of the saddle, peering at the ocean rushing by below.

She wasn’t even able to formulate a silent reply, but the dragon could sense her fear and desperation. And then she plunged forward out of the saddle, head first, spinning wildly as she dropped towards the sea.

Oriens roared and dove after her. He darted around her falling form, trying to find a way to stop her spinning descent without harming her, his mind filling with her panic and his own. With a snarl, he darted in and managed to snag her with his clawed foot.

“Block him out, Eliana!” he shouted in her mind. He hammered against her mind with his own and, though she could hear him, he could not fully press his mind to hers. He could not get in to help her.

Eliana pressed her eyes tightly shut, trying to force the intruder from her mind, but his grip was firm. The effort sent shocks of pain through her body as her mind and the foreign consciousness grappled for control of it. She screamed aloud from the effort and the pain as she struggled to remember Caelum’s instructions.

His voice filled her mind, his kind face appearing before her. I will never see him again, she thought, and her heart ached. The presence in her mind seemed to draw back, as if flinching away from her emotion. Quickly, Eliana dug into the relinquished ground and forced the stranger’s mind away with all of her strength. It vanished, leaving her body aching and trembling.

Oriens seemed to feel the presence leave as well. “Is he gone?” he asked, his voice tight with anxiety.

“Yes,” she panted. “Get me back in the saddle.”

“Alright. Get ready!”

He rose a hundred feet above the sea, then released her from his claws. She controlled her fall, turning until her feet were beneath her. Oriens’ golden form swooped below her, and she landed roughly in the saddle. She quickly tightened the straps around her legs again, then directed her gaze back to their group of adversaries on the beach.

“Get closer!” she called to the dragon.

Dodging arrows, they flew to the shore, drawing closer to the black-cloaked figures, whose faces were obscured in shadows. Eliana pulled at the magic in the back of her mind as she extended her right hand above the sea beneath her, straining to move the great, surging weight.

The waters rose up in a great wave, and she grinned. The bowmen seemed to stumble back in surprise. With a shout, she swept her hand forwards, towards the beach, and the wave followed the motion. It roared as it surged at the cliff, then crashed down on top of her attackers.

Oriens pulled up, and they hovered for a moment, holding their collective breath as they waited for the waters to recede to their original place. A dark figure rose up out of the water, hovering above the heaving surface. His hood had fallen back, and a pair of black eyes glared at them from beneath the wet, bedraggled mop of white hair.

Oriens looped quickly backwards, trying to put space between them and the Dark sorcerer. There was no need. The sorcerer dove back down towards the water and grasped the cloaks of his two comrades, whose wet hoods were over their faces like death masks. He pulled them both from the water, as if they weighed nothing. Then, without another glance at the dragon and Rider, he spun his black cloak around the three of them and they disappeared.

Eliana stared at the spot where they had vanished, her mind numb with shock. How could he possibly be there, in Amiscan? Why had he come? Why had he left so quickly?

“He tracked us here,” Oriens snarled with his mind. “He intends to kill us.”

“Then there can only be one reason why he left so suddenly…” Eliana replied quietly.

Their two minds shared the same thought. The sorcerer would be gathering reinforcements, likely from the emperor himself. Soon, the entire army of Vereor would descend on Amiscan. And it was all because of them.