WATCHER ABOVE

 

 

The young red dragon looked on as his charge walked deeper into the wooded lands. Carefully, the scaled creature slinked across the tree tops trying not to disturb its bright green surface too much. He was very heavy after all.

Just beneath him, he saw the Wild Elves also dancing through the trees following this peculiar intruder in their woods. He knew that the elves took the boy to be Lefhym, but the dragon knew better.

Xao skimmed delicately across another lush green treetop looking at the estranged wizard below. He felt the midday sun push its welcoming warmth into his gleaming crimson scales. As he moved from sturdy oaken branch to sturdy oaken branch, he kept his tail fully extended outward to help him with his balance. Xao never thought that in all his two hundred and twenty-four winters of life on Kuldarr that he would be chasing a boy across treetops. It was absurd! And yet there he was bounding from one perch to the next, eyeing the youth far down beneath him.

When Ashyn had re-entered the Shalis-Fey, Xao had surely thought the olive-hued boy mad. The Wild Elves were hunting and killing wizards. Why would he risk entering the lion’s den? But then the answer was all too apparent: his sister.

Yet it created a problem for the dragon, for even though he had just recently been reunited with his ward (from his perspective anyway, since Ashyn knew nothing of his existence), the Shalis-Fey’s narrow pathways and thick trees offered a serious conundrum to the rather large and wide dragon. Sure he wasn’t as big as his elder hatch brothers and sisters, but he definitely was nearly the size of a human family’s dwelling. One of the smaller ones perhaps, but something large enough that he couldn’t maneuver comfortably in the confines of the thick, floral forest.

This left him to skirt across the massive tree tops, looking through the leafy canopy to spot the tall young man below. If Xao hadn’t seen Ashyn entering the Shalis-Fey from Czynsk that one morning, the boy would have been lost to him, again. Yet, fortune had smiled favorably, and he had spotted Ashyn as he entered those dark looming woods.

Following from above had been a simple affair after that. After all, he had done it some eleven winters prior when the old wizard had sought to take Ashyn through those very same woods as a child.

Now though, things were slightly different. Ashyn was a young man bent on vengeance. Xao saw his movements through the forest less as focused and more as erratic. He was searching for something that he didn’t know how to find. Following the wizard and boy eleven winters before had been an easy affair. That was before they entered the maze at least. Then it had been impossible. He had only the magical presence that Ashyn had emanated to go on, but it had been enough to save the boy before he had been consumed by a fire that the boy himself had started. Now Ashyn didn’t display that presence to the dragon anymore. It was suspiciously absent, and Xao wasn’t certain as to why.

Still it would soon present a new problem to the dragon. While Ashyn stayed within the thinner oaks that offered Xao slivers of vision through from the tree tops above, it was fine. But it wouldn’t be long before Ashyn dove into the heart of the Shalis-Fey where the trees were as thick around as some of the eldest wyrms he knew. Those trees would be so high it would be nearly impossible to see him then.

The red dragon needed something that would let him watch the young wizard without exposing his presence, and without hindering the dragon trying to move within the confining woods. He just wasn’t sure yet what it was he could do. Mireanthia would have known what to do. She had always seemed to know what to do.

He thought of his deceased hatch mother as he extended his still sensitive wing into the cold winds. The battering breeze felt refreshing against his swollen, bruised wing joint. It had finally healed enough to carry him in flight, but not for extended periods. This forced him to perch on the stouter trees of the woods, which, to his surprise, held the burden of his weight rather well.

Occasionally he would fly, but with his condition being what it was he knew he wouldn’t be able to circle above the woods like a bird of prey forever. Not to mention he’d run the risk of the Wild Elves spotting him. Sure he would camouflage his appearance as best he could, but the little elves with their pointy sticks were wily ones. He knew his game would be up if they spotted him. So even though Xao had a clear vantage on the red-headed wizard now, he knew that he was working with borrowed time.

Still, his mother would have found the solution easily. She had managed to follow Ashyn’s mother once across half the southern continent, never once seen by Jade or anyone else for that matter. So how could she have pulled off the feat without anyone at all noticing her? She couldn’t have looked like a hillside the entire time. It would seem rather odd to be followed by a moving landmass. So what did she do?

The rustling of the Wild Elves beneath him caught his attention. He looked down and saw them hopping from branch to branch with deft speed. He peered past, eyeing Ashyn worriedly. Was this it already? Were they about to strike?

He saw the boy far below staring more at the babbling brook he was following and less at the threat above. The idiot child wasn’t even aware enough to look up.

Xao thought briefly about roaring to startle the wizard into looking up, surrendering his hidden nature, when he realized that the elves were leaving Ashyn behind. They weren’t going to attack the wizard after all. It seemed that they had found something else further east of the boy.

The dragon’s pallid yellow eyes followed the nimble Ferhym as they performed their acrobatic acts of brachiation silently across the thick branches of the tall oaks. He was awed at how deftly they moved without making enough noise to alert the hooded man walking some ways below.

Then it dawned on him that they were moving past a great deal of the forest’s tree dwelling wildlife as well. And they were doing it without giving the denizens any real thought. Some of the animals shuffled in dismay, and one bird squeaked in alarm as a Wild Elf ran too near to the nest of its young, but none of it was jarring enough to alert the young traveler beneath them all.

Soon the elves were well out of sight from the wizard walking obliviously below, and the animals of the trees were settling back into their nests. With his charge safely out of harm’s way for the moment, the dragon looked once again to the natural inhabitants of the Shalis-Fey. An idea began to percolate in the dragon’s mind about how to nullify his own growing predicament.