That night, Cody dreamed once more. This time, the dream was more vivid and easier to remember afterwards. Inferno was flying in the dream, with Cody and Mournful riding on his back. All three of them were wearing armor, though in Cody’s dreams he couldn’t quite visualize any of it, even his own, though he knew it wasn’t his normal armor. The clouds around them obscured his vision, but he could see shapes around him. There were shadows in the clouds, some equally as massive as Inferno, others the mere size of pigeons, as far as Cody could tell.

                They flew through the clouds, and Cody could hear the buzzing of mental conversation all around him. The noise was similar to that of a large group of people in a massive hall, only it echoed far more and by the time he singled out a specific conversation it was over with. From the “sound” he could tell that there were hundreds of them talking about little, unimportant things. Inferno skillfully dodged a tall pinnacle of rock rising from a mountain. The resulting movement forced him close to one of the things accompanying them. Cody just caught a glimpse of grayish-blue feathery skin before Inferno twisted to dive out of the creature’s way. The creature let out a mighty roar, something akin to the sound of an eagle screech or a dragon’s roar.

                Inferno dove down lower until he was flying over the lake. Cody couldn’t tell which direction they were flying in, but wherever they were going, he sensed that they were getting close. That was when the dream faded as Cody was awoken by the sound of movement. His eyelids flickered open abruptly and he glanced around at Inferno’s inner wing shelter. Aval and Omen lay comfortably and silently in front of him, closer to the edges of the tattered tent. It was barely dawn, the sun not even poking out of the mountains yet, but he heard movement again.

                Quietly as he could, Cody pulled himself out of Inferno’s wing shelter to see what the noise was. He emerged to see Mournful shifting out of her gryphon form, with Destiny and Ashheart still asleep next to her. When she was fully in human shape she waved to him in silent greeting and pressed a finger to her lips, telling him to be quiet. Cody nodded and cautiously tiptoed around Inferno’s head, trying not to cringe at the hot, damp air that came out of his open jaws and enveloped his legs. Mournful followed on silent feet. The two continued to walk silently away from the group until they were well out of hearing range, some ways into the beginning of the forest.

Cody smiled and sighed before saying, “I suppose Inferno needs all the sleep he can get.”

“Well of course, he’s going to need his strength.”

“What do you mean?” Cody asked, his interest piqued.

Mournful sat down on a log and answered, as if it were already obvious, “We have to leave.”

Cody stared at her for a moment, confused. “Why? Inferno can barely lift his head without killing himself.”

This time it was Mournful’s turn to stare as she explained, “It’s not that bad, and no doubt he will feel a lot better after he’s had a good sleep.”

“No, what he needs is more sleep, a lot more. If he moves now, he’ll reopen all of his wounds and probably kill himself! Besides, why do we need to move?”

Mournful glared at him before responding, “In case you’ve forgotten, Blackscales, Aval and Destiny spotted us two or three days ago. That means that anyone that bothers looking this way, whether it be Micah, Argos, or their riders, will see us and know that something is up. And do you know what trouble we’ll be in then? You and Inferno will be killed, Goldscales’s name will be forever tainted by their one mistake, and Omen, Ashheart and I will undoubtedly be banished, or worse. Now tell me, would you rather condemn us all to certain death by staying here until Inferno is in better condition, which could take weeks, or you could give us all a fighting chance by helping Inferno to heal quickly in the next few hours before we have to get going.”

Cody quickly came up with excuses, “Can’t I just teleport him?”

“There are such great dangers and conditions to teleportation, even when one as gifted as yourself uses it. Above them all, teleporting an injured creature significantly reduces your accuracy, and increases the likelihood that the transported one is killed, as well as weakens them. Let’s say you walk ahead a few hundred yards and teleport Inferno to your position. In his current state, if it doesn’t kill him, he will likely be three miles away and too weak to tell us where he is. In the middle of a dark, massive forest, you can consider him dead right then and there,” Mournful countered.

“But surely walking isn’t any better for him? He is weak and hungry. What he ate last night was a mere morsel to a dragon.”

“Which is why I thought that you and I should go hunting. There is a heard of deer not too far from here and you still have your bow. I’m sure I could find some more death cap mushrooms while we’re gone as well, they spread like the plague in this part of the mountains.”

Once again Cody was curious how she knew so much about dragons, but somehow he felt that he should trust her judgment. With a resigned sigh he nodded and thought about where he had put his bow. He guessed that it was somewhere near Inferno. He gestured to her that he would return in a minute and went back to their campsite, where he immediately noticed it near Inferno’s back. As quickly and quietly as possible he snatched up his bow and arrows and made his way back to where Mournful had been sitting, only to find that she had disappeared.

Moments later he heard her voice in his head, saying, “Follow me, fast as you can!”

No sooner had he looked up he saw her feathery shape looping through the sky. Without question he dove over a nearby log and began pounding through the forest as quickly as his underused legs would allow. Hard as he tried, he could tell that Mournful did, on several occasions, swoop around to come back into his sight. He didn’t expect to best any creature of the sky of course, but he had hoped to do better than he was.

Fortunately he didn’t have too long to go before he was able to track the deer himself. The first sign he saw was some fresh scat and quickly after that a single, fresh hoof print in the mud. About ten minutes into his running, as Mournful disappeared from view yet another time, Cody slowed down and put his hand to a tree to rest for a bit. After a minute or so, he looked up again and immediately gasped.

The tree in front of him was noticeably different. At about the height of a man there was nothing interesting about it besides its size, the diameter easy as long as he was tall, but somehow he saw, twenty feet up in the tree, half of the branches were missing. The bark of the tree was stripped smooth.

“One…big deer scrape,” he gasped as he looked at its enormity.

At the same time he heard the voice in his head, “The deer are only another few minutes to the North, you should arrive soon. They’re heading your way.”

“Am I supposed to bring down a deer twice the size of a dragon!?”

Mournful seemed surprised by his hostility. “I figured you would go for one of the smaller ones, the does are usually at least eight feet shorter in a herd this size, and lucky for you this seems to be a mix of sizes. I see a few does about eight feet tall. Besides, it really depends on which dragon you were referring to.”

“Not funny, these things are huge!” Cody exclaimed in his thoughts as he began to slowly press forward, hesitant. “Argos told me that some of the deer could grow quite big, but there were always a majority of smaller animals.”

Mournful laughed, “Welcome to the wild of the Pass. But Tell you what, if you shoot one of them a few times, just enough to weaken it, I’ll bring it down for you. But try to get two; going for such small prey won’t feed Inferno.”

Cody gulped and nodded. Knowing she couldn’t see him, he sent her a brief thought of reluctant agreement and continued forward. He walked on quietly, relying heavily on stealth as he did. He tormented himself with possible outcomes of an unsuccessful hunt; Inferno starving to death or not having enough energy to make it far enough, or Cody or Mournful being gored to death by a buck’s five-foot horn-tips.

It seemed like mere second before Cody heard the first sign of larger life. For such a massive buck, the creature was miraculously quiet, at least until it stepped on an entire fallen tree. The resulting crack overwhelmed Cody’s senses for almost a minute. Then it came into view, and his amazement was evident once again. He only saw part of it, but he did see a tawny pelt, oddly enough with darker brown stripes all along the flank, possibly to disguise it better.

“Go on, fire!” Mournful told him.

It took Cody a minute to figure out what she meant, but then he saw the herd following the massive buck, and suddenly remembered why he was there. Time was a blur, the forest was a blur, he was convinced he wouldn’t even be able to see the herd soon, let alone a target. The buck was so massive, and he was so small and terrified….

He barely noticed when he drew his bow and knocked an arrow, all he knew was the sharp twang as he let go of the string. One arrow after another he let fly, until he had two embedded deep into each of the two does Mournful had pointed out. The herd scattered, and the humongous buck was gone.

The rider stumbled forward a few paces, subconsciously following the trail that his injured prey had left. He soon fell to his knees. He knew not where he was or what he was doing, only that two massive deer, puny compared to the buck, lay dead before him, a white gryphon standing over them. The next minute he saw Mournful by his side. He didn’t know what she was saying, only that she was telling him something.

Is that what this is? He thought, is that the kind of thing I am expected to face on an everyday basis as a rider?

Suddenly, searing pain shot through his face as Mournful struck him, hard. He toppled to the side and clutched his cheek, abruptly aware of everything around him. At once Mournful picked him up and stared into his eyes, making sure he was with her once more.

“You need to stop being such a novice at this. Accept it; you’re in a giant’s world, brought here by a giant. The ancient Dragon Warriors faced common creatures out here ten times as ferocious as a deer. You need to understand that you can’t depend on Inferno, Omen, Ashheart, me, or anyone else to fight for you. If you wish to ever earn a title half as noble as Dragon Warrior, you had better learn to fend for yourself. It’s a dangerous world you’ve entered, and it’s about time you knew that!”

Cody was confused. He knew that he should buck up and do better, and in hind sight he definitely could have avoided getting yelled at. But what Mournful said seemed to mean something more. They rang with a deeper truth than he could have possibly hoped to understand. That, and she seemed truly bitter about something, as though she had just come to a horrible realization, one that clearly destroyed whatever good there was in her for the time being.

“I know where to go,” he heard her think, her thoughts so furious that she unintentionally broadcasted them to the world around her.

Mournful pushed him angrily to the ground, grabbed the largest of the killed deer, and shifted into her gryphon form before flying away, leaving Cody with his head swimming.

It’s a dangerous world I’ve entered.

Mournful is way more than she seems.

I don’t know where we’re going.

I’ll soon find out.

~

                It was nearly noon by the time Cody had made it back to the camp, confused as he had been about Mournful’s words and with the massive load of deer to carry. When he did get back, he saw Inferno struggling to eat the back half of the deer Mournful had brought with only his jaws. But even as he watched, Cody noticed that a large portion of the kill was already eaten Inferno tore a leg loose from the bloody carcass. The dragon chewed once, weakly, cracking the bones just enough before he dared to swallow. But when his rider emerged from the trees, he immediately lifted his head in relief, albeit only slightly.

                “Cody! I’m glad you made it back alright. When Mournful returned she just told me to eat before she walked off, grumbling on about how you wouldn’t be able to last on your own. I would have come to find you…” to finish his sentence, Inferno tried to ruffle his wings but his effort was in vain, for all it earned him was a slight shift in their movement and clearly a great deal of pain.

                Cody glanced at the others, all but Mournful, gathered around a small fire eating the remainder of the deer some ways off, before he settled by Inferno. “I’m fine, but are you? Where is Mournful?”

                Inferno grabbed the remaining part of his first deer, the last leg, and ate it in a similar fashion to the first, saying “I’m afraid that the pain is somewhat greater now that the battle is over and my wounds have sealed, the very feel of my scabs peeling open makes my skin crawl. As for Mournful, she left almost as soon as she arrived, I’m guessing back to her old cave den. Did something happen between you? She seemed very disturbed.”

                Cody shook his head, “She just snapped. I can’t tell if it was me or not, but she seems bent on getting you on your legs today so that we can move to a more sheltered area. I don’t know if it was my fault or not, but I believe that she is going to make you get up, one way or another. She seems to have an idea on where we should go, but I haven’t the faintest clue where that might be.”

                Inferno paused in his chewing and stared at Cody for a long while. Finally, “When we first met Mournful, I knew that there was more to her than we imagined and I was very fearful of that, but in the short time that we’ve gotten to know her I’ve been made certain that she means us no ill will. I daresay my wounds won’t allow me to move an inch without bleeding out, but something about that gryphon is…inhuman, Cody.”

                “Well obviously, she-”

                “Nothing like you think, Cody,” Inferno told him, firm in his answer. “The elves, the dwarves, the humans, they are all creatures that we know of and while each race has its secrets we know much of them. But Mournful…Mournful is a different kind. She knows, Rider. Something about her reminds me of the way things should be, and I sense that we are invading her world. Mournful has some kind of trick up her sleeve, one that will either benefit or hurt us greatly, that I’m sure of. The problem is that she does not know which one it will be and neither do we. We can only trust that our inner primordial beasts will save us, as I feel it does for her kind, the true natives of this land. It’s a dangerous world we’ve entered. It’s a world where natural things reign, and to survive it, we must become as natural things.”