Page 151 of Upon Buried Embers
I laugh again, reaching up and taking the burnt bit between my fingers. Wiping at it.
“It’s not funny.” He grumbles, but there’s a small smile tilting his lips. “Come, let’s continue for the day.”
The deeper we go, the warmer it becomes. We stop at the edge of a stream and have some water, which is also warm, and then we sit to eat.
“Aquadelia Dragons, blue, are great in water,” he says, taking another drink. “They can hold their breath the longest.”
“Luxem dragons, green, their chests can glow? Create some light?”
“Good, they’re also the least dominant. Next.”
“Red dragons…”
“Ignis,” he says.
“Ignis, they can…”
“Their fire is like lava,” he says, taking the waterskin and filling it. “Most dragon fire is controlled in some sense, a steady stream. Though some do it more than others. A red dragon’s firedoes that, but it also spurts out, splashing around the stream of fire. Like it’s heavy.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“Very,” he agrees.
“And Drogonah, Tenebri. What about them?”
“Considered the largest and most dominant. They’re fighters. Tough. They’re essentially a battle dragon with how ferocious they are.”
I nod. “And the white one?” he eyes me. “The woman, the Dragonbond,” I correct quickly. “She had a white one.”
“Yes, Seraphin dragons. Usually wild.”
“They are?”
“Yes. They’re slender for their speed, and that’s why we don’t often see them. They’re too fast, and they don’t care for the Dragorie, generally.”
“Then how did she get one?”
“That’s unknown.” She must be a great Dragonbond if even Rohan doesn’t know.
“Is it really necessary for me to remember these things for The Games?”
“As I told you, not only do you need to come to try and speak with the other dragons in a setting where their Dragonbonds won’t always be with them, we also may beagainstthem.”
I swallow roughly. “How do we go against them?”
“However the king decides,” he grinds out, and I’m taken aback by his anger for a moment. “He writes his wicked games down on pieces of paper, throws them in a bucket and all Dragonbonds walk up and pick one out of it.”
“And you don’t know what’s in there?”
“Never. It can be a race, it can be a brawl, it can sentence someone to death.”
“He can do that?”
“He can, and he has.”
“That’s… horrid.”
“That’s the King of Dracozar.”
