Luminous

89 - Forgotten Four

Long before the sun had commenced her crawl up towards the horizon, members the newly-minted alliance departed for the Windcatcher City.

With seven humans in want of transport, Gillian agreed to have his subordinates who would later be heading for Amplevale—Dockar, Vitrius and Torbald—carry them back in dragon form alongside himself and Meya. Unsurprisingly, the humans wouldn't be riding the dragons but clinging onto their front legs.

With darkness as their cover, they took off on a low, leisurely glide skimming the top of the sand dunes. They could've shot high above the clouds, of course, but the humid cold and buffeting wind would freeze the humans' frail lungs. Even at the humble speed and height, Coris was already shivering against Meya's underbelly in his bundles of cloth. She adjusted her arms, pressing him more snugly into her warm skin. To her right was Gillian with Baron Hadrian and Zier in each arm, and to her left was Vitrius with Lady Arinel and Jerald. Bringing up the rear, the frailer Dockar and old Torbald each took Simon and Christopher, respectively.

The sky lightened to pale hyacinth, revealing the walled city blinking just beyond the rippling sea of sand. The dragons touched down behind a row of sand dunes and resumed their human disguise, then the congregation slogged their way up to the travellers' road leading to Hyacinth's town gate. As part of Meya's plan, Baron Hadrian had sent word of her surrender, and Meya found Hyacinth's sleep-deprived guards-women waiting for her with seething smiles and swinging chains.

When Coris threatened to be chained alongside her in the wheeled cage and paraded back to the palace, the guards relented. Still, Meya and the four additional "Greeneyes" must walk among the populace on foot, while the noble, human guests were allowed to lounge on palanquins balanced atop the mighty shoulders of Hyacinth women.

The outrageous arrangement triggered yet another heated lecture from Coris, before he announced he would join Meya and her brethren on the ground, forcing the rest of the group to follow suit.

Though even Zier didn't seem inclined to gripe, Meya couldn't help dipping her head in apology at her human comrades as two guards steered her forward, squeezing each of her arms in their gigantic hands.

By the time they ventured onto the thoroughfare, the sun had already risen free of the Blue Mountains' shadow. Meya knew from experience that it was schooltime. As artisans and merchants bustled around arranging their storefronts, young girls came charging out from doors and alleys on Meya's right-hand side of the street, clean-shaven and draped in purple-embroidered white togas, toting copies of the Holy Scriptures. Fathers came trooping down the hill towards Meya, leading their kicking, bawling daughters. They saw their children off at the school's entrance—a gap in the mile-long wall on the left side of the street, crowned with an imposing sandstone arch. Some shot dirty looks at the teenage girls hunkered nearby, gnawing on dates and chucking pits at passing young men, along with whistles and jeers.

"Ow!"

Meya whirled around at that familiar cry. Coris was rubbing his cheek. His eyes found the owner of the invisible traces of date sugar and spit now on his skin in a tall, muscular young woman who looked to be around Meya's age. Even as she wore the school's embroidered toga, she lounged against the flaking adobe wall with no regard for how harder her father would have to work to scrub the dirt off the white fabric.

"Hey, gorgeous. Where you from?" She called, prompting her surrounding friends to whoop and crow. Her eyes zeroed in on the region not far below Coris's midriff, "Betcha got a solid five hundred down there."

A second round of applauding cheers befell the woman as Coris flushed crimson, even as he'd known enough to feign total obliviousness and hasten his feet. Seething, Baron Hadrian tugged up his sword. Sunlight glanced off the silvery hilt, silencing the hoodlums for good—or while they remained in sight, at the least.