Oath of the Broken Sword Chapter 6

Panic broke out. The wargs, sensing our fear, charged into the terrified ranks of the recruits. They were huge creatures, all muscle and scales, moving with a terrifying speed that belied their size...

The world dissolved into a deafening roar of wind and panic. The sudden release of the tether sent Tempest and me into an uncontrolled, tail-over-wing plummet. My stomach lodged somewhere in my throat, and the jagged teeth of the Wind-Shear Spires rushed up to meet us with terrifying speed. Silvershine’s cold, ancient presence was gone as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving only the ghost of its imperative echoing in my skull. *Release the anchor.*

*Gods, what have I done?

* Kaela. Had she made it to the ledge?

Tempest’s instinct screamed louder than my fear. She fought the spin, her powerful wings straining against the chaotic airflow. My own survival instinct kicked in, fueled by that strange, lingering heat in my veins. I squeezed my thighs against the saddle, my hands gripping the reins not to command, but to become part of the dragon’s struggle. We were a single entity falling from the sky.

“Tempest! Level out! Use the downdraft!” I yelled, the words torn away by the gale. I didn’t know if I was speaking to her or to myself. I leaned into the fall, urging her to roll, to catch the air beneath one wing. It was a desperate gambit, a feeling more than a thought, borrowed from that fleeting moment of connection and Silvershine’s sharp intervention.

Miraculously, she responded. Her rolling motion smoothed, and with a great, shuddering snap of her leathery wings, she arrested our plunge. We shot forward, skimming so low over a sharp spire that I felt the scrape of stone on the sole of my boot. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.

“Elia! Status!” Lieutenant Renn’s voice crackled from the relay crystal, sharp with uncharacteristic urgency.

“Alive!” I managed to gasp, pulling Tempest into a steep, climbing turn to get back to the training area. “Kaela? Is she—”

“Secure,” Renn’s voice cut back, a layer of grim relief beneath the professionalism. “A reckless, borderline suicidal maneuver, recruit. But effective. Return to the spire. Now.”

The flight back was a blur of adrenaline and trembling muscles. The other recruits had landed, their Drakes milling nervously. All eyes were on me as I brought Tempest in for a clumsy, jarring landing. Kaela stood by the ledge, her uniform torn and a nasty gash bleeding on her forehead. Her Storm-wing was being calmed by a handler. Her gaze, when it met mine, was a complex storm of fury, grudging respect, and something else I couldn’t name.

Before Renn could reach me, before Kaela could speak, a different kind of tension swept through the spire. The air grew heavy, charged with an unnatural stillness. The Drakes, including Tempest, all lifted their heads in unison, a low, uneasy rumble building in their chests. From the direction of the main dragon-roosts, a distant, blood-curdling roar shattered the afternoon calm. Then another. And another.

It wasn’t the disciplined cry of a knight’s mount. It was pure, unadulterated rage and terror.

“What in the Seven Hells…?” Renn muttered, his hand going to the sword at his hip.

A junior handler came sprinting towards us, his face pale as death. “Lieutenant! The Nesting Crags! It’s a riot! The dragons… they’ve gone mad!”

Renn’s face hardened into a mask of command. “All senior knights, with me! Recruits, to the barracks! Lock it down! That’s an order!” He was already moving, vaulting onto Ignis’s back. The bronze dragon launched itself into the sky with a powerful thrust.

Chaos erupted. Senior knights scrambled for their mounts. The recruits, myself included, stood frozen for a moment, caught between fear and a desperate need to do something.

Kaela grabbed my her grip like iron. Her eyes were no longer on me, but fixed on the distant plumes of smoke and the echoing roars. “They’ll be overwhelmed. There are too many nesting females, too many juveniles. A full-scale riot could destroy half the garrison.”

“The order was to barracks,” I said, my voice shaky, the official protocol a flimsy shield against the cacophony of battle.

“You just defied an order to save my life,” she shot back, her voice low and intense. “You think that thing inside you, that… *whatever* it was that let you see the tether like a puzzle… you think it’s for following orders?” She was already pulling me towards the roost where the more placid Drakes were kept for ground drills. “We’re not senior knights. They won’t expect us. We can help from the ground, evacuate handlers, contain the spread.”

Her logic was insane. It was treasonous. And it was utterly compelling. The heat in my blood, still simmering from the fall, agreed with her. It whispered of responsibility, not rules.

We commandeered two ground-running Drakes—lighter, faster breeds used for patrols—and galloped towards the source of the chaos. The scene that greeted us was a vision from a nightmare. The Nesting Crags, a vast, cavernous complex built into the mountainside, was a maelstrom of fire, scale, and fury. Dragons of all sizes lashed out blindly, slamming into rock walls, tearing at the heavy iron gates of their enclosures with teeth and claw. The air reeked of sulfur, blood, and the acrid tang of a strange, purplish mist that seemed to cling to the ground.

Senior knights circled overhead, but their efforts were chaotic. A bonded dragon would hesitate to strike a frenzied brood-mate, and the maddened beasts showed no such restraint. I saw Ignis barely evade a jet of uncontrolled flame from a massive-tip.

“The mist!” Kaela yelled, pointing to a shattered ceramic vessel near one of the enclosure entrances. “It’s some kind of alchemical agent. It’s driving them mad!”

My Drake shied away, its eyes rolling white with fear. And then, a new kind of panic seized me. A psychic scream, silent to the ears but shattering to the mind. It was Silvershine. Her presence, usually so vast and contained, was a maelstrom of agony and ancient rage. She was trapped in her cavern, the largest and most secure of the roosts, but the mist was seeping in. The magic that kept her isolated was now her prison.

*They come. The defilers. The scent of the Void…* Her thoughts were fragmented, bleeding into mine. Images flashed behind my eyes: shadowy figures scattering the vessels, a symbol of a twisted eclipse etched on a cloak cuff. The Twilight Cult. Event Eleven, the poisoned wine at the ball—this was their real move. A direct assault on the heart of the Knight’s power.

“Silvershine,” I gasped, sliding off my Drake. “She’s in trouble. The Cult… they’re here.”

Kaela stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “How could you possibly know that?”

“There’s no time to explain!” I started running towards the main entrance of Silvershine’s roost, dodging a panicking handler. The great iron door was warped, heat radiating from it. From inside, I could hear Silvershine’s roars, mixed with the sound of her colossal body slamming against the stone.

“Elia, it’s sealed! You’ll be killed!” Kaela shouted after me.

I pressed my hands against the scorching metal. The heat in my blood surged in response, a sympathetic resonance. My vision sharpened again, the world resolving into lines of force and stress. I saw the locking mechanism, a complex series of rune-et. It was meant to be opened only by a senior knight’s key or a command word.

But I didn’t see a lock. I saw a pattern. A flawed pattern. A single, hairline fracture in the central rune, a flaw in the casting. My blood-heat focused on it, a lens concentrating sunlight.

“Stand back!” I yelled to Kaela.

I didn’t know any spells. I had no key. I only had the desperation of a bond I didn’t understand and a power I couldn’t control. I slammed my palm against the fracture in the rune, pouring everything I had—my fear, my will, the strange energy in my veins—into that single point.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, the rune flared with a brilliant, painful white light. A crackle of energy shot through the metal, and with a groan of protesting iron, the massive bolts retracted. The door swung inward an inch.

The wave of psychic pain that hit me was physical, doubling me over. Silvershine’s agony was my own. Kaela was at my side, her face a mask of shock and dawning comprehension. She didn’t ask questions. She simply put her shoulder to the door and shoved.

Inside, the cavern was filled with the same purplish mist, but thicker, more concentrated. Silvershine was a thrashing monument of silver scales, her chains snapped, her eyes burning with feral madness. But when the door opened, when I stumbled inside, her rage faltered for a split second. Her massive head swung towards me.

*You… Blood of the Broken…*

The connection snapped into place, fiercer and more visceral than ever before. It wasn’t just thoughts;

it was a flood of memory. A silver dragon soaring through skies filled with floating cities. A war between beings of light and shadow that shattered continents. A pact, an oath, a betrayal. The weight of a thousand years smashed into my consciousness. I cried out, falling to my knees.

“Elia!” Kaela’s distant.

Silvershine took a step towards me, lowering her head. The madness in her eyes was receding, burned away by the intensity of our connection. She saw me. Truly saw me. And I saw her—not just a beast, but a witness to epochs, a guardian of secrets now lost.

A sharp, authoritative voice cut through the moment. “What is the meaning of this?”

Marshal Marcus stood at the shattered entrance, his face a granite mask of fury and astonishment. His eyes swept from the broken door, to me on my knees, to the now-calm ancient silver dragon whose head was inches from my own. The riot outside was still raging, but in this cavern, a profound and dangerous silence had fallen.

His gaze locked on me, seeing not just a recruit who had broken orders, but something else entirely. Something unforeseen.

“How did you open this door, recruit?” he asked, his voice dangerously quiet.

I had no answer he would believe. All I had was the echo of a thousand-year-old oath and the terrifying knowledge that my life had just irrevocably changed. The first part of the Dragon Wing Trials was over. I had survived the sky. Now, I had to survive the ground, and the deadly attention of the most powerful man in the Empire.