Chapter 1: Chasing a Fairy Dragon

The sun beat down on Tristan’s back as he stomped down the soggy road. The torrential rain the night before had soaked the entire region through, making travel hellish. All but the most stubborn traders would be waiting to travel until the ground firmed up a bit. But not Tristan. This type of hard travel was what he had grown used to over the past two years.

He trudged along the roadway, doggedly following the glimmer of sparkling starlight shining from the lantern on his hip. Tracking the faint beam was especially difficult during the day, but it was his only guide to the creature that had plagued his existence since he set off on his journey at the ripe young age of sixteen—to find and slay a dragon. But not a mighty, powerful dragon; a paltry, insignificant fairy dragon. The weakest of the bunch, although the most crafty and cunning.

Oh, he’d almost caught the small creature a few times. But each time, it slipped away, or he struck an illusion it created, or he experienced some terrible luck and slipped on some ungodly substance strewn upon the ground. Every time he had gotten close, he had either injured his quarry only slightly before it escaped, or it had hexed him, cursing him with ill fortune.

His quest was to kill the thing, but even a shoddy student like Tristan knew that a fairy dragon could be killed only after it was first trapped within a cage of iron—like the one strapped to his back. It had been a heavy burden to carry, but it was the only means he had to permanently put the dragon down. At least, if his grandfather’s dragonslaying manual was anything to go by.

Some dragonslayer I’ve turned out to be, he thought. What would Father or Grandfather think of this whole mess, chasing the weakest of dragonkind for years? Bertram or Gisele would have killed it in their first encounter, I bet.

Bertram was five years Tristan’s elder. Gisele, the middle child, was three years older than Tristan. Both were full-blood Humans, just like their parents. Tristan shared the same father, but his mother was of the Elves, bringing her heritage from across the sea, as she used to tell a younger Tristan while he sat on her knee in the study.

He had always been compared to his siblings—and not in a good way. Bertram, more traditionally handsome than Tristan, was popular with the girls. He had made a name for himself at twelve when he helped their father kill a vile dragon cultist here in their homeland, the Kingdom of Bhant. Tristan vividly recalled listening to his grandfather’s evening lessons on dragonkind, while Bertram chose to stay in the practice yard swinging his weighted blades over and over.

Gisele, on the other hand, was not just a skilled blade-adept. She was a natural. Their father used to say that she was born to have a sword in her hand, and she barely had to practice with the blade. Ironically, most of her time was spent at court. Although she still wanted to be a dragonslayer, like their father and grandfather, Gisele also had her eyes set on ascending the ranks of nobility. Leveraging her family name to impress a possible husband was one of the easiest ways she could do that.

As for Tristan, well, he was more or less average at everything he tried. He was quite attached to his mother, the only one who seemed to truly love him for who and what he was. His father refused him access to the private tutors his brother and sister were assigned, but his mother taught him history, reading, writing, and a whole slew of other subjects, including spoken Elvish. His grandfather simply taught him how to slay dragons, as he did the other children.

Tristan’s whole life, he had been plagued by bad luck. And as his thoughts returned to the present, his bad luck manifested once more: out of nowhere, the rain from the night before returned. Tristan could feel the mud wiggling into his boots through the travel-worn treads.

He paused as the lantern on his hip vibrated. His brown eyes began scanning the drowned farmland, searching for signs of magical activity. Magic always left a glimmer of some type in the air to indicate its presence, like a mirage in a desert. The lantern began to pull away from his hip slightly, indicating a very strong presence of magic—and a direction.

Leaving the road, Tristan took off across the adjacent field, tripping and falling a few times and having to heft himself up out of the mud. He was not a clumsy person, and there was no good reason to fall. But fairy dragons were well-known for their trickery and practical jokes, and Tristan chalked up his slipping to that malevolent magic that had plagued him ever since he first encountered this creature. That, or the natural bad luck he’d been cursed with.

I’m so close! he thought as he drew his sword, one of the Anorox family’s ancestral blades—made of steel, an almost white-hued metal that had been forged and refined for precise stabbing. Injure it, grab it, get it in the cage. Then stab it.

The crops that were knee-height became taller and taller the farther he ran from the road, and his eyes were glued, fixated, on the shining trail of glimmering starlight. The pull on the lantern was stronger than he had ever seen. There’s so much magic around this place. Must be powerful essence-weaving at work. The dragon must be close!

He slowed his gait and walked more cautiously, narrowing his focus to his hearing, an Elven trick he had learned from his mother, as she taught him to listen to the very sounds of nature for hints of danger in the environment. The rustling of the cereal crop stalks, the slight squelching of the mud underneath . . . and a strange noise just barely on the edge of his hearing.

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Tristan could hardly believe his Elven ears. A faint giggle came from somewhere in front of him. No way to make a stealthy approach, he thought, carefully parting stalks as he went. Then he heard the crunch underfoot of a bit of barely that had seemingly fallen right in front of him as he crept. Once more, he cursed his luck. I could just rush the dragon, but without a clear line of sight, that’s tricky. Think. Options . . .

The lantern kept pulling, and he took a sharp breath. The dragon must be casting a huge spell!

Curiosity warred with caution. He took a breath and decided—It’s all or nothing!—and charged forward through the rustling stalks. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, the thump of his heart in his chest, and the exhilaration of tracking down his prey, again. Gods, please don’t let there be anything to screw me up this time. Please let my bad luck just stay away.

Tristan entered a clearing that glowed with magical energy. The whole environment was warbling and warping from the power’s distortion. He had no clue to the type of spell it was, or which Order it might fall under, since learning of essence-weaving was reserved for those who could afford to study, and his father never saw the benefit of it for his children—even most disliked son. Tristan knew the basic concept of essence-weaving, as any noble did. But such spell-craft as this was beyond his comprehension and limited exposure to the art from his few observations at court and in the capital.

In the center of the clearing was his prey—the fairy dragon he had been chasing all this time. Some might consider it cute: a small, foxlike creature covered with a mix of armored scales and silky fur that gleamed with the hues of the rainbow. A pair of stark-white deer antlers extended above its perky little upright ears. Although its wings were shaped like those of a dragon from his grandfather’s manual, and colored like them—a crimson and blue that clashed with each other—these wings were not leathery; they were almost like the wings of a butterfly blended with a blooming flower petal.

“Well, look who found me, again,” the feminine voice said arrogantly. “Aren’t you tired of chasing dragons?” The creature giggled and flew upward. Tristan spotted a circle on the ground under it, intricately dug into the mud with symbols in a language he didn’t know, yet felt familiar nonetheless. A language he had seen before but couldn’t place. “I’ll be going now,” the dragon said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s been fun! But you’ve bored me . . . for the last time.”

Tristan steadfastly resisted the temptation to make the mistake he’d made on his first encounter: letting himself get distracted from his task by the taunting of the dragon, something that was not in his grandfather’s dragonslaying manual.

Instead, he charged forward and chopped downward with his sword, staying silent, reserving all of his energy to fight.

“Hey, that is not nice!” the fairy dragon cried as she dashed sideways, dodging the blow.