Dragons of War - Rising Storm

Chapter 18 (2/2)

The head of the formation took a perch on top of one of the highest building around that was still mostly intact. Tony and Luke, along with many of the other squad leaders. With few other buildings to match it, they had a clear view of everything around, and below them.

The group in the lead then began to glide above Tony and the others, and each year that followed took their place below the next until we all circled that single tower. Once the first group had found their perches, the second group followed. By the time it was our turn, There were few places to land that was near the sky.

Fred and the groups of year one we were with ahead of me fluttered onto a steel beam high above the ground. I glided softly down to join my group and was finally able to take a closer look at everything around me.

Despite it still being morning, that place was cloaked in shadow, the light of the sun couldn't reach us there and a chill settled over me. Sand covered most of the ground below, concealing a hidden world from the past, I knew. In a few places, it was bare enough for me to see what was left of the roads. There were traffic lights broken and lying on the ground, and the bare bones of cars that had long since rusted to nothing.

Then my eyes caught sight of movement, and I focused in on it.

A small face, their body hidden by a sheet of metal, poked out. The features soft and undefined, it was a child. More movement elsewhere, and I realized there were many people below us. They watched, wide-eyed and hidden from sight.

I didn't know what they thought of us, but I remembered very clearly what I had when I was in their shoes. It gave me an odd feeling to see it repeated in front of me like that, so soon.

"This is your first time seeing this place isn't it?" Fred asked in open communication, and my attention was drawn to him.

I hardly had the words to reply and just nodded my head.

"When I was a child, this place was still quite active. Many of the buildings had been down for decades, but there were enough people here for it to be a drop-off point for merchants and resource dealers. It was enough for people to survive. Once the Cabal came through though, there was nothing left. They took all the men they could and left everything else to die." Fred went on.

I noticed the heads of nearby dragons turn and he went on.

"My mother used to tell me stories about how the landscape had looked so much different a lifetime ago. The lights that never ended. How they were brighter than the sun. That the noise and hum of technology had replaced nature in every way. And how the technology had, in many places, even replaced humans. But even for her, they were all stories. It didn't fail to fill me with an unquenchable curiosity at what it had once looked like, though," he smirked and glanced over to me. "Can you imagine? These buildings standing tall, filled with lights, that made nighttime seem like the day?"

"Now who's telling whom stories?" I heard Howard call out from somewhere among the groups around us. Once called out though, the attention of the dragons around Fred turned back to the scenery.

Fred ignored his comment but was silent for a moment before he and turned back to me.

"Anyway, this is where the main exercise of today takes place," he went on and nodded his head to the high building above us. "The leaders send out orders to each group and we must follow them perfectly, or the entire formation will fall apart. Depending on how well they give the orders, and we follow them, it can get very cluttered in the sky."

"I was told these exercises are meant to train us in formation flights and evasion, but I'm not so sure yet how either will be helped by this," Fred finished.

High above me, I saw movement and the first wave of dragons came swooping down. They circled the building we perched on once and then broke away into the maze of buildings around us.

They flew around, in what seemed to be a random design, but when I turned to watch the dragons far above who directed them, I noticed how they were watching them fly.

It was more than just an exercise in formation - they were judging their skills in flight.

After a few minutes, and the next formation took flight from the building. The same size as the last, they seemed to fit well with the first group but flew in a completely opposite manner. The packs themselves remained tight, every dragon that flew together almost touched wings.

"How often do we have to do this?" I questioned while watching both groups swoop and dive through the air around my head.

"About three times a month, as I am told. This is only my second time here for training," Fred replied.

Before long, wave after wave followed the last and the sky was again filled with dragons. The more that entered the air, however, and the harder it was for each dragon to avoid each other.

Then, the first collision happened. Two Warriors smacked into each other with a clap of thunder that ricocheted off the buildings and trailed off into the air. Both dragons fell with a sickening limpness but one recovered fast enough to flap his wings and regain height. The other, however, only recovered enough to even out in the air and then he slammed into the sand and dirt in a cloud of dust.

The formations in the air quickly calmed down and a single Pack dragon that had remained on the tower swooped down through the air. It was almost three times the size of a normal dragon and I figured out right away why they had remained on the tower.

As a Pack Dragon, they were used mostly in transportation, but it didn't take much for a dragon of that size to cause a lot of damage to anything, and they were seen as one of the most valuable types. They were also one of the rarest.

After a couple of minutes, the Pack Dragon again rose in the air, but the injured Dragon Warrior they had swooped to meet was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a human rode on the dragons back, arm held in close to their chest.

My thoughts began to swirl with the idea of that happening to myself in the air. How had it not happened more already? With so many dragons already in the air, and more to soon join in, I no longer looked forward to joining them in the sky. And what about their lack of order on the very trip there? What made them so likely to follow orders now?

Naturally, that was the moment when we were given the order to join them.

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