Rise Of The Dragon King (Book 5) by M. R. Mathias Read Free Book Online Page B

Rikky had a feeling he hadn’t felt in some time: true fear. The lake creature could have snapped his dragon in half with just one bite. Luckily, its neck was thick and short, and its limbs were all four on the ground or in the water, not reaching. It seemed as if his dragon was but a falcon or a hawk irritating a gill-necked, bull-headed mountain cat the size of a ship. The thing lowered its head and side-smashed Linux right out of the boat, then it buck-kicked a huge splash and smacked Silva with its deceptively long tail.
    The silver dragon went flailing into the trees, but then another roar resounded, and another.
    “Crystal.” Prince Jericho grinned. “And Blaze.”
    “It is Crimzon,” Pascal said, his awe pushing through his fear. “And your father is riding Jade this time.”

    Another week passed for Marcherion and Blaze, then they spotted flocks of birds churning through the evening sky. This lifted the weary wyrm and its rider’s spirits, for the avian clusters meant that there was land in the distance.
    It turned out to be a very short rest there, for the island was overgrown with thick, thorny vegetation and the birds all had nests on it. It wasn’t small, but the area available to them to laze on was limited at best.
    The morning they left the island, the huge flying creature showed itself again. March watched it for a while and decided it wasn’t hunting them. What it was doing was beyond him, and he didn’t discount that his judgment was based on hope more than any sort of knowledge. When it flew alongside them one afternoon, he finally got a good look at it.
    It was a bird. It had feathers and a beak and an enormous wingspan. It was mostly black and darker shades of brown and its neck was long like a crane’s or astork’s.
    March was more relieved than anything, for after taking the whole creature in, he had full confidence that Blaze could either outfly it, or scorch it out of the sky with his fiery breath.

    Clover couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d seen a colossal before, fighting in the pits of Harthgar. It had been spelled to obey a fairly powerful wizard, and had gone undefeated the whole time Clover was there, but that was more than a century ago.
    She was suddenly upset, for the memory was of one of her and Crimzon’s grandest times in life. She’d made a small fortune by offering a hundred-to-one odds to anyone willing to bet against the monster. The wizard controlling it had been a sneaky, dark-hearted bastard, though; she remembered that, too. He’d wanted Crimzon to fight his beast, but Clover didn’t trust it would be a fair fight.
    As Silva went rolling into the trees, Clover was yanked out of her memory when she saw Jenka point his arm and finger out toward the dragon. A tiny stream of emerald-green energy beamed out of him, and when it impacted the silver wyrm, it enveloped her and seemingly cushioned her fall.
    The colossal’s tail came around and almost got Jade, then, and Clover barelyhad time to dodge it’s heavy head.
    “DO NOT KILL IT!” she yelled. “DRIVE IT TO THE SEA!”
    Can you use the ethereal?
Zahrellion asked.
    I can
, Clover replied, and felt a little silly for trying to scream over the sound of four dragons and a riled beast. She wasn’t used to fighting with other dragon riders, and for a few moments it showed.
    Drive it to the sea
, she repeated her thought.
    Yesss
, the huge red wyrm, Crimzon, replied before sweeping across the colossal’s path and blasting a jet of flame, forcing it eastward instead of south. Clover felt her dragon sizing this one up. He might have been able to take the pit monster, but this one was even bigger than he was, and she had no idea where he would start.
    The eyesss
, he answered with a hiss, and she knew he was right.
    It was hard to say if it was even aware of them as it went, but one thing was sure: such a creature would devastate a city by just walking through, and it was trying to go south, where most of the cities