Inferno flew low over the treetops, their bare tips reaching for him like claws from the heart of the forest. Cody was holding on to the handle of the pitch black saddle while he mostly lay down in it, leaning forward a lot for the first time ever, as far as he could remember. It was even more amazing than sitting up. He hadn’t realized it before, but sitting up he was always the tiniest bit concerned with falling off, even if his legs were held tight by the straps attached to the saddle. Lying down, he felt like an actual rider, speeding above the trees and leaning in to even the slightest turn.

            He wore a full suit of flexible but sturdy armor that he had bought before while he traveled through the towns. Black helmet, boots, cuirass, leggings, and gloves covered him from head to toe, making him look like nothing more than a bump on Inferno’s back, part of his body. On the rider’s back there was a sturdy battle axe, a bow, and a sheath of arrows, while on his belt he had a sword, its blade as black as the night that quickly retreated around the two.

Cody liked to believe he was good at using all three, but he had rarely used them during his travels and could only hope that he really was skilled with them all. As Inferno approached the mountain cave where Argos and Heyrone lived, the rider began to hope that he would receive some sort of training or test in those areas. He grew nervous when the monstrous entrance came into his sight, and he began to hope that the training would be some sort of weapons training. Perhaps he could manage to impress his mentor on the first day?

He felt his gloved hands clutch the saddle’s handle tighter as Inferno slid to the side and flew into the mouth of the cave just as the first rays of sunlight stabbed into the sky behind the mountains. Cody sat up straight, his mouth wide open as he gaped at the sight of the cave. Torches lined the walls, retreating down a long, wide, and very tall cave into the depths of the mountain. Most surprising of all, there was no one there.

“Where could they be?” Cody asked Inferno, imagining Argos the massive blue dragon hidden in the heart of the cave.

The dragon shrugged his wings before folding them to his side and took a deep breath through his nostrils. “I smell Elder Argos well. His scent is stale, but leads down this tunnel. I’d say they went down in the middle of the night at some point. Perhaps they go there to sleep and they want us to go down after them?”

“I’d assume so,” Cody said, looking around at the cave.

The cave was so large that Argos would have been able to walk through it, lie down, sit down, and do almost anything in. The ceiling rose high above the smaller dragon and his rider, making them appear puny. After a few more moments of wonder, the dragon set off down the tunnel at a fast dragon-sized trot, Cody bumping around uncomfortably in the saddle. With a simple thought, he convinced Inferno to speed up.

The rider slid back down to the position he was in when they were flying and felt energy rush through him as Inferno leaped skillfully over boulders and dove around the largest ones. After a little while the sun faded behind them until they had to rely more on the light of the torches to see, even with their enhanced vision. Then Inferno slid to a stop, spraying rocks forward into the depths of one of the three tunnels that now surrounded them.

“Why did you stop? Can’t you smell which way they went?” Cody asked the dragon allowed as he looked around at the three caves.

“That’s just it,” Inferno began stomping the floor as he nervously paced, “I can’t smell them anymore at all. There’s a faint trace I suppose, but it’s old and comes from all of the tunnels.”

Cody thought for a moment before thinking to the dragon, “I guess we should try them all. Start down the left.”

In an instant Inferno agreed and wasted no time before barreling down the tunnel. The torches flickered as the strong wind following the two blew at them and made their flames dance, but Cody paid no attention to it. He sat crouched in the saddle as Inferno thundered along quickly, careful to avoid the occasional dip in the ground caused by Argos’s massive paws. Then, as they burst into a cavern that Cody hadn’t noticed, he felt something slam into him.

Rough hands latched on to his waist and within moments he felt his fingers get wrenched from the handle of the saddle. Luckily he wasn’t hanging on to the reigns, or they would have surely snapped. He felt the rough saddle disappear beneath him as his legs were ripped away from it and he and his attacker were thrown into midair. Time seemed to slow down as he twisted skillfully around to confront the enemy, but instead he landed heavily on the dirt-covered rock floor, the wind forced from his chest.

Cody felt a firm boot press gently on his back, and he turned to look for Inferno. He saw one of his black wings sticking out from a massive blue paw, bigger in fact than the black dragon was. The long, sharp talons formed bars in front of Inferno’s annoyed blue gaze. Argos let out a low rumble of dragon laughter as he bared his glistening white fangs unashamedly.

A deep voice filled Cody and Inferno’s minds, “That was rather amusing, hearing the two of you race through the halls like a herd of terrified deer.”

“I was fast and nimble,” Inferno complained through his injured pride.

The man above Cody joined in his dragon’s laughter, “It’s alright Inferno, you are no more than a hatchling. You were nimble enough, but far from fast and certainly not silent.”

Cody felt the boot lift from his back and he was allowed to roll over. He saw a hand in front of his face and grabbed it gratefully so Heyrone could help him up. Cody assumed it would have been difficult to take him off of Inferno’s back like that, but Heyrone appeared as frail as ever, with bags under his orange eyes and he appeared to be struggling to lift his arms and move his feet. Perhaps it was an easier maneuver than he had thought.

“Follow me,” the dwarven rider said in a powerful voice that was very forced, and barely managed to stay steady with those two simple words.

Argos pulled his paw away from Inferno, who flapped his wings once or twice to make sure they were in working order and then folded them to his sides and followed the two riders. The monstrous blue dragon gently lowered himself to the ground, a loud oomph escaping his parted jaws, accompanied by a tendril of spiraling smoke. He curled himself along the wall, his large body completely hiding the way they had come and filling only a little less than half of the room. His scaly tail leaving the wall to curl by its owner’s weak paws.

            Cody and Inferno followed Heyrone without hesitation as he led them through a tunnel near his dragon’s head that wasn’t illuminated by the torches. It swirled around in random patterns for a few minutes and soon it was so dark that even Inferno’s dragon vision couldn’t gaze ahead.

            “How do you know when to turn?” Inferno asked the elder rider, Cody barely containing a chuckle when he heard a scaled body collide roughly with the wall.

            Heyrone smiled even though the others couldn’t see it before he answered, “I have wondered these tunnels so many hundreds of times, and I believe I know them better than the back of Argos’s paw. But still, my vision has greatly improved over the years to the point where I can see better than any creature alive in either Mrana Akano Furista or Semiones, except perhaps Merikh and Argos.”

            Cody grunted in pain as his knee smashed into the wall on his left, but he only took a moment to rub it before limping on after his mentor, who he could have sworn flashed him a glance laced heavily with humor. Finally they came around a turn and Cody found himself blinking a million times a second as his vision filled with black spots. Before his eyes could fully clear, he felt something as hard as a rock bump into him. He could sense Inferno visibly wincing as he fell hard to the floor for the second time.

At this point the rider was annoyed and dreading the minute they would have to leave again. So he focused his mind on other things and looked around at the room. It was twice as tall as Inferno, so almost five times as tall as Cody. It was easily wide enough for the dragon to spread his wings and even run around in comfortably, to some extent. The far wall was lined with bookcases that formed a semicircle ahead, each one full to bursting with books, several of which even lay on the floor beneath the shelves.

At one side at the ending of one bookcase was a small stool that rest just beneath a desk that slanted towards the stool slightly. At the top of the desk it leveled out a bit and that was where several pieces of parchment and a large silver quill and ink that was black as night rested. On the opposite side of the room was a larger flat desk with a comfortable chair pulled up beside it. Right next to the smaller desk, mostly in the middle of the room, was a fresh bed of dirt covered in small sticks, the top layer covered in so many layers of thick, extravagant animal hide from what appeared to be silver deer to fluffy bear skin.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Heyrone said in amusement as he gestured Cody towards the little stool and Inferno to the furry pile of warm fluffiness.

Cody reluctantly settled into the little wooden stool and felt a back to it that swiveled with back movement. With some annoyance he realized that the stool was very unsteady, but it did spin around with great ease so that it was simple enough to get into and turn to the desk without much hassle. Then he looked over to his dragon and his eyes narrowed in jealousy. The dragon rested tentatively onto the bed, the top layer consisting of four fluffy bear pelts. They looked so comfortable and warm that Cody thought he was going to start drooling. One of them had dark fur that blended with Inferno’s scales nicely, but the rest were so stunningly white that it was almost blinding. But still, the dragon looked beyond comfortable in his plush seat, rolling onto his side and closing his eyes to prove Cody’s idea to be true.

Most annoying of all was the fact that Heyrone sat there on his comfortably padded stool, watching the two with intense interest, all but laughing at the novice rider’s discomfort. When it appeared as though the two were as settled as they possibly could be, the older rider eased backwards until his back was up against the wall and looked at Cody a little more sympathetically.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to that stool, you’re going to visit it often.”

“How often?” Cody asked; worry choking his voice a bit.

Heyrone let out a gentle laugh before he answered, “Probably at least once a week for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, in rider terms, that means several years.” Cody’s eyes widened and the dwarf continued, “Don’t you worry, you will be too focused on your studies to notice how uncomfortable it is, trust me, I know. But the faster you learn, the sooner you can say good-bye to it forever.”

Cody looked down at his seat and had no trouble doubting that it was a hundred years old. “Well, what kind of studies?” the human rider asked, pushing the stool to the back of his mind.

“Do you know how to read and write?” Heyrone asked seriously. “It’s not overly important, but I want to make sure you can read most of the human-written texts I have.”

Cody shrugged, “No one in my town thought it was important either, but I learned to read all the same.”

“And it’s a good thing you did. So I assume you read most of that book I told you to read easy enough?” Heyrone asked as he straightened.

Cody squirmed nervously in his chair before answering, “Not really. We only read a few chapters, and then it was hard to find time to read after we began traveling.”

“I assumed so,” Heyrone said, not appearing disappointed in the slightest. “A lot of what that book says is…incorrect in a sense. It was written by a human who only had loose contact with dragons and their riders, but I had hoped it would give you a sense of what you were doing. Do you remember what specific topics you read about?”

Cody let out a laugh and quickly answered, “Not really. I vaguely remember something about magic and dragon growth, but that’s about it.”

“Well, those are the topics riders and dragons care about most at the beginning,” Heyrone said as he stood and pulled a book from the nearest shelf. He opened it and looked over it for a minute before asking, “I assume that you are most concerned with magic and dragon fire?”

Cody suddenly felt a little nervous and answered shyly, “Yes. The book said that we would be able to use magic, but aside from that moment in Merikh’s cave, we haven’t seen anything about it.”

Heyrone looked deep into Cody’s eyes from where he stood and said, “I don’t want you to try even the tiniest bit of magic unless I tell you to. It is very dangerous and you are still far from ready to practice it yourself.”

Cody nodded furiously, remembering how he passed out after using the magic for the first time. He had though that it was from the pain of the fire, or the agonizing thought that he had lost Inferno, but perhaps it was the use of magic itself. He looked up at Heyrone to see that he had returned his attention to the book he held in his hands and he tenderly returned it to the shelf.

“Just to get that subject out of the way for the moment, I will tell you a bit about it,” Heyrone said as he sat beside Inferno with his legs crossed, the dragon barely sparing him a glance. “That book explains that dragons a month old can breathe fire. Can is the key word, as in, it is within their abilities. Clearly Inferno is ready to use fire physically, but there is much you two need to learn before actually trying, and especially succeeding to use it. The same goes for your magic. You are clearly capable of using it, but I highly recommend that you don’t even try yet. Instead, let’s focus on a safer and only slightly less entertaining topic.”

“What’s that?” Cody asked curiously.

Heyrone smiled, “Your name. I told you a long time ago to call yourself Blackscales, correct?”

Cody nodded before adding, “But you never said if I should permanently use the name and never really clarified exactly how I should use it.”
            “I told you that the enemies wouldn’t be able to know who you are, but Merikh was messing with my head quite a bit. In truth, using that name endangered you way more than your real name and I didn’t even tell you how to use it. Riders change their last names to it, like I would be Heyrone Bluescales, then there would be Autumn Whitescales, a cool sound I might add, and her brother Avalsmokes Goldscales. But there is another use for it, a bit more unusual. Care to guess?” Heyrone asked with slight excitement. Cody just shrugged.

Heyrone rolled his eyes and explained, “In your human language you say things like master so and so, lord someone, and queen whatever to refer to someone above you. You also use things like servant, peasant, and more to talk to people below you and address them. In the world of riders, There is nothing like that.”

“There isn’t?” Cody asked in wonder as even Inferno lifted his head curiously.

Heyrone shook his head, “Nope. We show respect to riders of all ranks, from mentor to apprentice, from elder to hatchling. If you were to show respect for me you would call me Bluescales once we knew each other better, and I would respect you in turn by calling you Blackscales. Also, many people in these valleys know the correct way to address both a rider and his or her dragon at the same time. If they wanted to talk about both me and Argos, they would address the two of us as Bluescales, and they would do the same if they wanted to talk to both of you, using Blackscales instead. Do you get it now?”

“I guess,” Cody said in slight wonder. “So riders call each other by these names if they know each other, or if they want to show respect for each other?”

“And other people around here may call you Blackscales as well,” Heyrone confirmed. “There won’t be many at first, but there will surely be some. Tomorrow I want you to visit the elven city. Fril has agreed to give you a bit of weapons training since I can’t give you enough of a challenge.

“Is that it?” Inferno asked suddenly, surprised.

Heyrone chuckled for a moment before answering aloud, “No, now it’s your turn. Argos will assess your flying skill until sunset and then you two can go back and sleep until morning.”

“Until sunset?” Cody asked in surprise.

“Talk to Argos, he’s the Lord of the Winds!” Heyrone said, gently shooing them out.

A smile cracked Cody’s lips when he stood up from the stool. He had only sat there briefly, but even that had been agony. He was still a bit sore from his injuries, but he was more than eager to do something more active, and hopefully avoid the chair. Without hesitation, he led the way down the tunnel and only bumped into the wall about a dozen times. When sunlight appeared, the rider jumped forward and his eyes quickly adjusted.

They entered the cavern just in time to see a long blue tail disappear into the tunnel. With a quick thought to Inferno, Cody leaped onto the dragon’s back and they began racing through the tunnels. The black dragon did his best to be as silent and stealthy as he could, and Cody was actually feeling proud. They raced over boulders with hardly a sound and Inferno dove towards the empty entrance. Inferno was beginning to slow as the neared a ledge, but it was too late. A blue tail-tip flicked out and the rider and dragon flew forwards, tumbling into nothingness.

A thought from out of nowhere thundered through their minds, “Recover yourselves!”

Inferno opened his wings abruptly, the tendons in his fragile wings bulging with strain as he attempted to correct their spiral. His wings fought to straighten as the trees below loomed closer by the second. The black dragon finally managed to keep them steady and fast as he could he adjusted their course, but he wasn’t fast enough. Cody felt a massive lurch and he nearly flew face-first into a tree when his dragon crashed into it. Instead, the force of it snapped the massive birch in half and the two tumbled forward another dozen feet before Inferno landed clumsily on his sore paws.

“We could have been killed!” Inferno growled at Argos, flexing his wing painfully as he studied a small tear to see if it was serious.

The massive head appeared from the cave and his golden-orange eyes said that he was far from angry at the little dragon for snapping at him. Instead, he clawed down the mountain with humor glistening in his eyes brightly. The two dragons soon took off and Argos led Inferno and his rider over the mountains where they made their dens. They watched with interest as the grey mountains flew beneath them and were replaced by thick forests. Argos quickly explained that deer in the mountain pass varied greatly in size, some twice as large as Inferno even! Then the blue dragon landed on top of the last mountain they passed, telling them to make a kill so he could observe their hunting.

Inferno wasted no time at all and quickly found a large heard of deer before bringing down the largest, a buck that was so massive that without its horns it was as tall as the black dragon himself. His horns were even bigger than Inferno’s making him a little moody. It must not have been easy for a dragon to be beaten at anything by his prey. Nevertheless, they brought it to Argos, who simply watched them with an unreadable expression. He told them that, for the day, the lesson was over and they were left to eat the massive deer by themselves. The two quickly retreated to their den and had a good night’s sleep with stomachs so full they felt as though they would burst.