The Night Rider

Chapter 22 - Weave

"You'd better hope this works Regent Nivara or we Soundboom's won't stand for it any longer!"

Nivara smiled gratefully, before breathing a sigh of relief, the russet brown Soundboom finally leaving her desk to man her own station. 

The Willowridge's representative certainly knew how to hold her own in a battle of logic. With a lot of negotiating, Nivara had managed to convince half of the six injured dragons to agree to challenge the next Earth Traited. For now she would use the other volunteer dragons for the Trait matchups and the rest of the Soundbooms would begrudging continue to collect the scores. Despite the mishaps, they at least took the situation seriously. It was a shame the crowd of Traited didn't feel the same way.

They only cared about whether things were safe for them, not about the welfare of less than standard dragons. She may as well have been talking to a Soundboom dragon because no one had taken her speech to heart. All they cared about was themselves and their nobility. After all the effort she had put in to make the illusion as grand as possible and there was nothing to show for it.

The unfortunate downside of using the illusion to increase the explosion was that according to the dragons, Prime had almost ended the lives of six Soundbooms the Mist Maiden had promised to protect. Now the dragons were protesting despite her insistence that they had been completely safe thanks to her mist but they didn't believe her. The one difficulty of having Silvertongue in your system was that even if you told the truth, there was no guarantee they would believe you.

Soundboom dragons were stubborn. Even more so than Ethros himself and only listened when they wanted to whether it was the truth or not. They were considered the ruffians of the dragon world and one of the hardest races to agree to a contract. Oathed or Agar aside, they had a nasty habit of not knowing how to control their voices along with their two jaws, one for speaking and one for...well, booming. 

More often than not, they scared their own prey away and even deafened those they had begrudgingly agreed to partner with. But still, they had managed to find solace underneath the Undercity alongside a select group of Tinker Moles within their underground home who had developed inventions to lessen the impact of an accidental deafening. Nivara appreciated their achievement greatly and provided one for everyone present but decided to use her own mist earplugs just in case. 

Bright pink wasn't really her colour.

Nivara leaned back in her chair, a wave of exhaustion flooding over her as she fought against the urge to rest her head against the table. She was drenched in sweat but attempted to hide it with her Everchange cloak. She could barely register what needed to be done as the chilling frost continued to threaten to resurface, her hands numb with cold. She couldn't keep this up for much longer. She needed a break. No. Not until she figured this out and a few more contestants had gone.

Slipping another vial of Silvertongue out of her pocket, Nivara used her Trait to turn it to mist and spike her newly refilled drink before taking a gulp. She barely heard the boy call out his and his Agars name but she quickly dragged the second form forward and scanned through the contents. Air Traited. Oh. Oh no. She couldn't have asked for a worse attribute against her mist. Nivara hoped that despite the previous round, the dragons would do their job diligently.

Nivara stared down at the form, its contents sprawled out haphazardly as they gave brief answers for more important details and long winded analogies for something as short as an age or surname. It baffled her but she did her best to pick out the facts from the unnecessary bits of added extras.

The next contestant was an Air Traited named Swift originally from the outskirts of Nocturus but now lived in Pelt with no family other than his Agar, Cloud. She was a small, silvery female akin to a fairy or sprite but Nivara could barely tell as Cloud hid within the dark clothing of her Agar, too frightened to do anything but let off sparks of silvery light.