Lohia Kaarm, as a structure, was effectively a large, wide castle wall built in an uneven pentagon. The center space was massive, as large as some towns, and used for all manner of things required of a school that mostly trained flying, destructive creatures. The very center of that space sported a large town square, a dozen steps a hundred feet wide descending to a sweeping promenade flanked by ivory pillars. The pillars themselves were done up in banners and tassels, waves of white and red undulating in the breeze spotted with gold-dipped bouquets of roses.
The senior riders of the school and their dragons lined up on either side of the promenade, a hundred serpentine bodies on either side forming a wall of scale and muscle five meters thick. The sunlight sparkling off those scales shone in a thousand colors and more, and the riders' uniforms were lined up to match the colors of their partners. But the real color came not from the spectrum, but the personalities on display. Some of the gathered dragons lounged in neat curls, their heads perking up here or there to acknowledge a movement or a word from their riders. Others were perched up on their front legs, eyes scanning around in knowing anticipation. Still others paced in lines or circles, awaiting the event to come with excitement.
Gaelyn was lined up within the last antechamber with his classmates and cohort, three other rider trainees who had been his squadmates, study buddies, sparring partners, and family unit for his time in the dorms along with the twenty others his age who had made up his class. Roki, the fiery red-headed boy, held his metallic green hatchling in his arms like a baby, the dragon's head perched up along his shoulder, gently cooing under Roki's stroking hand. Nitani, the dark-haired, cool-headed man two heads taller and one span thinner than anyone around him held his burnished-golden dragon with its furry, fox-like ears on one arm, her head cradled in his palm while her body stretched up his arm and across his shoulders. Beillahn's grey-hued, slate-metallic dragon hung around her neck like a lei, its tail hanging under one arm while its head perked up at an angle, scanning alertly around the dim hallway.
Kisa had taken up refuge where she always had, curled around Gaelyn's shoulder like a scarf and was somehow, bafflingly, even with the electric in the air and energy in her rider, napping.
Until the fanfare jolted her awake.
A sharp rip of brass cracked the day in half, followed immediately by the cacophonous peal of dragon roars that chased it, then overpowered it with their clamor. An attendant on either side of the door outside pulled them open, and the sound hit Gaelyn the other twenty gathered trainees like a train, blowing hair back and almost knocking over more than one person. On queue, they all started moving forward.
Crowds gathered on the outer flanks, behind the senior riders on the sides of the procession. At the far end of the promenade stood the seven heads of the school board in a line, their dragons perched regally behind them. But even with all the grandeur and banners and dragons and shouting, it was the woman at the center of that line that commanded attention.
Cartinia Sirhucs was past her sixtieth year. She was only a head over five span tall, thin, and the strands of gray in her shoulder-length, braided hair had outnumbered the blonde many years ago. Pale-skinned and with a soft face, she was the very picture of demure delicacy--until you met her gaze. Her iron-green eyes sparkled with knowledge immemorial, rang with steel forged with the bellows of time, and saw through the world with a keenness more razored than the sharpest blade on the continent. The ferocity and power in those eyes could quell conflicts with a glance, liquefy the spine of war-hardened generals, and send lesser men fleeing. For all her body's delicacy, Iron Eyes Cartinia was a legend made flesh.
Mazmet, her pearlescent brown, perched formally behind her, his heavyset, thick body in a perfectly straight plane with his head reared up at attention in a way that towered behind Cartinia like a monolith of brown scales. Mazmet, unlike Cartinia, outsized his fellows by a quarter again, two hands thicker and two spans taller than any of the staff's other dragons. Like his rider, though, Mazmet's orange-gold eyes were deep, sharp, and proud, a hint of a self-satisfied smile lingering in their depths.
The fanfare and the roars guided the rider trainees down the street, their group spreading out from a blob to a rough line. Twenty-four new riders with their twenty-four hatchlings in a rainbow of colors strode down the lane with all the pride of those who would be the next to take up the mantle of a tradition a thousand years in the making. Even the most timid of them could not hide their wide, beaming smiles as they waved to the crowds. Even Gaelyn, typically resigned to focused, amicable quiet, could not help but raise his arms and wave at familiar faces, teachers, and school faculty.
As they neared the far end of the promenade, the sounds of the crowds slowly started to die off, and the trumpets blared the final notes of their fanfare one last time before falling silent. The students stopped a dozen yards from the steps that led up to where the board members stood, standing loosely at attention with anticipation running through their veins like ice water.
Cartinia took a small step forward, and the click of her heeled boot tapping into the white pavement may as well have rang like a gavel in a court room. Silence fell over the square like a silken veil in the span of one breath. She cast her gaze around, landing on each of the trainees, then spanning up and around the square, silent like a breeze but feeling for all the world like a guillotine hanging overhead. Gaelyn did his best not to flinch under that gaze, and mostly succeeded.
Finally, her sweeping eyes stilled, centering back upon the riders. Her face, once serene and calm, split into a gentle, warm smile. Her personal rune, glowing at the base of her throat, pulsed, projecting its energy into her voice. High-pitched and breathy, her quietly admitted phrase would have been difficult to understand even standing next to her, but that rune, "Hear," projected her voice across the courtyard as if it had been intimately murmured right into the ear of every listener.
"Thank you."
Like a gas explosion, the crowds erupted in applause and roars, fire from those dragons whose breath was safe to emit rending the air like washed-out fireworks. But only for a moment, as Cartinia's raised hand cut the sound so abruptly that the echo around the square even seemed to try and hurry to silence itself, lest it invoke her.
"Our classes grow fewer, each year, but never smaller." The words were near-dripping in pride, lilting and pleased and comforting. "Numbers, less; but power, greater." Her chin tilted up notch. "I choose to believe that where once stood a hundred riders and now only stands twenty-four means that each of those riders is four times the strength of those who came before, with a little left over to give back to the next generation. Your trials are behind you now, with only the future to find. Will you stay here with us at Lohia Kaarm? Will you venture into the world and make names for yourselves in other countries? Perhaps you will find yourselves a cause and dedicate yourselves to it scale by scale." Her arms spread, palms up. "Whatever it is you may do, may you do it with our banner at your back, and our hearts at your beck. Wherever it is you may go, know that you have a home and a hearth here with us. The cloaks you don today are a symbol of that belonging, and I hope you wear them with as much pride as we bestow them."
Her words hung, ringing through a silence that almost seemed to be asking permission. Sensing the anticipation, Cartina tossed her hands in a circle. "Yes, yes, as you would, please."
The explosion of cheers was somehow a chord deeper than ever before, shouts and whoops and roars mixing in a particular din that Gaelyn suspected would be ringing in his ears for a decade or more. Four by four, the cohorts made their way up, standing in a line before Cartinia. The other board members broke rank, moving around to open the heavy wooden chest and pull from within a number of dark cloth cloaks. Gaelyn and his cohort were second in line, and he watched as the first four gently set their dragons on the ground at their feet so a board member could approach them, carefully draping a cloak about their head and shoulders.
Made from a woven, dark grey fabric, the cloaks were hardly what one would wear for a winter expedition. They fell only just to the shoulder blades, with a cowl that only barely pulled forward enough to cover the forehead. That cowl was bordered by a leather band set with runestone at regular intervals, the only ornamentation on an otherwise entirely plain garment. At Cartina's nod, though, the riders each reached up and touched the top-most rune at the crown of the hood.
In a billowing gale, the cloaks expanded, their shortened backs rippling down as scales of hardened metal knit their way down the Rider's backs and over their shoulders, forming pauldrons and a cloak of waving, flexible armor. The leather cowl ring sprouted steel, links of chain around the edge of the cowl that spawned the same tessellating scales that thatched forward the width of a hand to a conical, pointed helmet. With a hiss, the helmets sealed, a seal that quickly worked its way down to the shoulders of the cloak, forming an environment in the head that would allow for flight at dizzying heights and speeds. A moment later, each rider reached up and touched the base of their neck, and a release of air rasped out from each armored helm as they collapsed and retreated back into the enchanted cloth.
"Nitani Feiyu. Gaelyn Fontine. Roki Kyrus. Beillahn Rorotorinne."
Gaelyn stepped up with his three classmates, gently unfurling Kisa and depositing her on the ground at his feet. Professor Bahnta, their flight instructor, made his way to Gaelyn with a cloak held in his hands, grinning. "Still plan on being the best?" the professor quipped, slowly unwrapping the cloak.
"Only if what you taught me holds up in the real world," Gaelyn shot back, bouncing on his heels.
"Works for me, it should work for you, long as you stay upright."
The wink at the end hinted at the debacle that Gaelyn had found himself in at the end of their third semester, but his answer to that was a cheeky grin. "I have this now, I should be fine upside-down."
Bahnta snorted, reaching forward to drape the cloak over Gaelyn's head and settle it about his student's shoulders. It felt entirely too dense and weighty for as light as the cloth felt to the touch, likely as a result of the enchantments within. The cloaks would support them in all weathers, stave off any precipitation, serve as armor, and help anchor them to their dragons once they came of riding age. The magical technology woven into them was incredible, but as Gaelyn reached up to activate the cloak, he could not help the stray thought that invaded the moment: What would they do about a cloak for Ivy?
As his helm ratcheted into place, he let the thought go. It was for another time, another moment. This was his moment.
The scales of his cloak retreated and he bend to scoop Kisa back into his arms. With its armor retracted, the cloak was light enough around his shoulders for Kisa to crawl back up over it, scuttling over Gaelyn's chest to wreath his neck and make herself comfortable. With a new weight over his shoulders, Gaelyn turned away, ambling back towards the school with the pride of Lohia Kaarm in his step.
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