Searching with the magic sense powered through their minds, Ivan, Zahara and Anders scoured the topography for any sign of the second rider who had failed to return. As they searched, Anders experienced a wave of gratitude. He now had time to realize how lucky he and Zahara had been in managing to escape unscathed, while the others had suffered horrific attacks. With one of the rider pairs found dead and the second possibly pinned and dying under the weight of her slaughtered dragon, Anders worried about what would happen if they caught up with Merglan.

He lost track of how long they’d been searching. The mental and physical effort required to continually seek for the rider was beginning to take its toll. Ivan and Zahara were the first to notice a life form ahead of them. As Zahara landed in a nearby clearing, Anders hoped it wasn’t another carcass being harvested by the carnivores of the forest. The grass that had once blanketed the clearing was gone, leaving behind a large patch of dirt. Anders’ heart began to beat faster. He recognized this place from his vision.

Ivan led as Anders, Nadir and Zahara followed him quickly along a narrow ravine gradually sloping down toward a patch of trees. The broad leaves of the massive branching tree could only be one kind, oak. Suddenly they heard a woman’s faint cries.

Anders and the others ran faster. Just as he’d seen, there at the base of a large oak tree lay a dead dragon on top of a woman in a way that pinned her in a shallow pool of crimson blood.

Anders slid onto his knees through the puddle of blood to the side of the woman trapped under the dragon. Her face was covered with her long brown hair. Anders swept her hair to the side. When her eyes met him, relief washed over her face. She whispered something that he couldn’t hear clearly. Closing her eyes, the woman let her head fall limply to the side. She didn’t make another noise.

Ivan bent down next to Anders and put his ear to the woman’s chest making sure he could see the rise and fall of her breathing before telling Anders to search her body for life-threatening injuries. Following Ivan’s instructions, Anders swept his hands over both of her arms as they were the only exposed limbs. He couldn’t tell if she was bleeding because of the dragon blood covering the ground. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t mortally injured on her upper body, though he and Nadir worried for the integrity of her spine.

“She probably passed out from the exhaustion of being pinned here for so long,” Anders commented to Nadir, who’d joined him in his examination.

I could feel a sense of relief within her before she passed out, Zahara said. She was hanging on with the hope that friends would find her. She’s extraordinarily tough.

“We need to get this dragon off her,” Ivan said. “Her legs are most likely broken, so we’ll need to take her back with us on Zahara.”

The first glimpse of sunrise was beginning to show in the east, allowing them to see the scene more clearly. After Anders, Nadir and Ivan attempted to push the lifeless dragon off the rider, Anders gave in to asking Zahara the obvious. He could tell she didn’t want to put her mouth around the giant dragon’s body and lift it up so they could pull her out. She’d been avoiding eye contact with them while they attempted to move the body by hand, but after several stern looks from Ivan and Nadir, Anders gave in and asked for her help.

Zahara opened her massive jaws and slid her mouth around the side of the dragon’s body, closing her eyes tightly. Anders could sense she’d separated her thoughts from his to protect him from the tragic event. She gently clamped down. Lifting her head, the dragon’s body began to rise in the center where Zahara gripped it. The body came up off the ground slightly. Anders and Ivan were able to carefully slide the injured rider’s body out to safety. The instant her body was in the clear, Zahara let go, the dead dragon splashing back into place. Zahara leapt back, revolted. Her gagging and hacking noises made Anders cringe as she vomited the fish dinner she’d eaten the previous afternoon.

Immediately attending to the injured woman, Ivan cut away the lower legs of her leather riding pants and began unstringing her boots. Once her skin was exposed, Anders could see instantly that she was in serious trouble. The lower half of her legs were bent at an unnatural angle. He helped Ivan remove her boots and began to address the broken leg when he noticed that her skin was incredibly cold to the touch. He reached up and felt the woman’s forehead with the back of his hand. Also cold to the touch. Anders knew that wasn’t good. He told Ivan, but neither could figure out how to warm her as they didn’t have blankets or any dry clothing. Looking back at her legs, Anders decided to focus on something he could attempt to help with, healing her broken legs before flying her back to camp on Zahara.

Both legs were bent in zigzagging fashion, suggesting multiple breaks. He put his hand out to attempt to heal the injuries with the spell Ivan had shown him after the battle.

Ivan saw what he was doing and grabbed him by the shoulder, stopping him. “Her injuries are far beyond our skill to repair.”

Anders looked at him confused and said, “We healed so many people yesterday. I mended broken bones and sealed deep wounds. What’s different about her wounds that I can’t heal them?”

“The breaks go well into her femur on both sides. Her knees are seriously damaged and both legs down to the heels are broken in many places. It’s much simpler to heal an open wound or mend a bone cleanly broken in one place. If you try to heal her without the proper magic, you’ll risk expending too much energy, which could kill you. Besides, if you did have the power to use the magic and miscast it in the slightest, she wouldn’t heal properly and would likely never walk again. This injury needs to be mended by a skilled healer with excess available energy.”

Anders nodded, lowering his hand to his side, slightly frustrated. “Okay. Well, what can we do?”

“You’ll need to create a splint for her. Using the energy correctly you’ll be able to form a splint where her legs won’t be allowed to move. I no longer possess the ability to use this kind of magic. Ever since I lost,” Ivan gulped, seeming to choke on his words. He glanced over to the dead dragon and Anders thought he could see Ivan’s hands shaking before he regained his composure. “If you use the magic, I can tell you what to do and show you how to create the spell, but I can’t do it for you,” he said sternly and looked again to the dead dragon.

Anders took a deep breath readying himself for the new lesson, “Alright, tell me what to do.”

Ivan walked Anders through the process of summoning the proper flow of energy to form a perfectly molded cast around the woman’s legs, rendering them fixed in their current position. The splint of magical energy didn’t repair her broken legs, but it merely protected them from further injury during transport.

“If the splint works as it should and everything you’ve just done is correct, she won’t experience any further damage to her legs when you and Zahara fly her back to camp,” Ivan said with a sense of trust in his tone.

Anders began to nod in agreement, but Ivan’s choice of words confused him slightly. He cocked his head to the side and asked, “Why did you say, ‘you and Zahara’ and not us? You are coming back with us, aren’t you?”

Ivan shook his head, “I doubt Zahara could carry all three of us over that distance. She’s fatigued and still very young.”

Don’t tell me what I am, Zahara chimed in.

Ivan turned to address her, “I didn’t mean to offend you, Zahara. I’m just thinking about the best way to get this rider back quickly. My extra weight would slow you down. Besides, I’ll need time to dispose of the dragon’s body. When we’re finished, I’ll start to walk back with Nadir.”

Irritated that Ivan was right about trying to get the rider back as quickly as possible, Zahara and Anders relented, agreeing to fly back without him.

But we’re coming back to get you after we deliver her safely to the medical tent, Zahara said, lowering her massive head to Ivan’s level.

“Alright, you can come back to get me,” Ivan agreed.

Together they lifted the woman’s body up onto Zahara’s back. With no way to strap her down, Anders had to make sure she didn’t slide off during the flight. Zahara assured him that she’d fly smoothly.

The sun had fully risen by the time they took flight. Zahara flew as fast as she could back toward the fortress where the elven and Rollo armies had established camp. Unlike the many hours it took them to find the rider, this time their path was straight and direct, not meandering and full of dips and dives. Two hours after they’d left Ivan, Anders could see the white canvas tents of the army encampment.

When they touched down, a group of elves stood waiting. Somehow, they’d known this case was urgent, but by their shocked expressions and gasps, Anders understood the elves weren’t prepared for the state of what he and the others had discovered. The elves helped Anders climb down cradling the injured rider.

As he passed her body off to the elves, one elf gasped upon seeing her face, “It’s Natalia!”

The group of elven warriors carried her body carefully to the medical tent nearby. Once she’d been handed over to those trained in healing, several of the elves returned, asking Anders what had happened. He told them about finding the dead bodies of the young elf and his dragon. He also informed them that Natalia was still alive when they found her, but her dragon didn’t survive. Before leaving the elves, Anders warned them of the splint he’d used on the rider’s legs, and how Ivan was worried that he wasn’t skilled enough to mend her.

Anders was relieved to hear one of the elves reply, “Don’t worry, young rider, I will get the healer.”

As the elves headed back into the tent to work their magic, Anders took a moment to reflect on the events of their search. He’d forgotten how haggard and beat up he was. His forehead was split open and his clothes were torn from the crash. On top of feeling thrashed and looking the part, his face was crusted in dried blood from the cut on his head and his clothes were saturated in dragon’s blood.

“I’m tired,” Anders said to Zahara, not bothering to switch to using mindspeak.

You look it, Zahara agreed.

Anders wavered in his two-legged stance, “I think I need rest. How are you doing?” he asked her.

I’m tired, too, but not as tired as you. I have enough in me to go back for Ivan.

“Oh yeah. I’ll come with you,” Anders insisted.

No, Anders, you need to stay here and rest. If you come with me, I’ll be too tired to make the return flight. I have never flown this much or this hard in such a short period, she told him.

Anders furrowed his brow, “Everyone seems to think I should be resting.”

Have you seen yourself?

Anders looked himself over and attempted to brush the crusted blood off his clothes. When the stains didn’t brush away after several swipes, he straightened up and said, Well, I guess if you can’t carry me, I’ll have to find somewhere to lie down, but I don’t like it when I’m away from you for too long. If anything happens, you’ll let me know, won’t you?

Zahara nodded, Go, get some sleep. I’ll be joining you when I return.

Anders did as she suggested. He stood back while she jumped into the air and flapped her wings, creating a rush of wind around him as she took flight. He placed his arm across his forehead, blocking the sun from his eyes as he watched her fly away.

Not feeling entirely comfortable in being away from Zahara for the first time since they’d bonded, Anders decided he should find Max, Maija and his cousins to let them know he’d made it back from the search safely.

He didn’t have to go far from the medical tent before Maija, Kirsten, Max and Thomas came running toward him from the camp. Surrounding him, they bombarded him with questions.

“What happened to you? Did you find the missing riders? Is that your blood? Where’s Zahara? Where’s Ivan?” The questions seemed to be coming from all angles. In his exhaustion, he couldn’t make sense of which questions to answer first, so he offered a short answer to each of their queries.

“Found one rider alive, injured, brought her back. Zahara is going back for Ivan. Yes, my blood,” he pointed to his head, “and, yes, blood from others,” he pointed to his stained pants. He finished by quickly adding, “Tired, headache and need rest.” Anders swayed slightly as he spoke.