The Dragon Tournament [Permanent Hiatus]

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

"I still don't understand why we have to head off right away. It's practically midnight! Can't we at least sleep the night before going?" Casimir whined as the others packed all sorts of things into their pockets: from knives to fruits to maps, you name it. They were pushing even more things into the bags attached to their dragons' saddles. Even Leopold and Casimir had been provided with the rather bulky-looking saddle.

"The flight to Altair takes several hours, plus the time it takes to travel inland far enough to reach the capital," Avery explained as she climbed onto Zhukah. "We can't waste any more time. We've already spent hours figuring out where the most likely places are that we need to search."

Leopold laughed a little at Casimir's unwillingness to come along. "What, are you scared of meeting your family again or something?"

You wouldn't even know, Casimir thought to himself as he shoved some supplies into his own pockets and walked over to Kuroz. He wondered whether all dragons were as silent as his, or whether Kuroz was simply abnormal for not speaking to him much.

'Why should I speak more if I have nothing to say?' Kuroz said, eyeing Casimir as he mounted the saddle much easier than he had been doing before.

"So that I know you aren't dead?"

Kuroz didn't say anything in reply but snort, not that Casimir had expected much else from the dragon. They waited in silence while the others got their thing organised and got on their dragons, which seemed to take much longer than it should have. Casimir had almost fallen asleep when Avery finally gave the word for them to take off and follow her lead and stay low.

He really fell asleep only a few minutes into their flight -- after strapping himself into the saddle.

When Casimir finally woke up, they were already above ground. He felt a pang of homesickness hit him as he looked down at the desert they were flying over. It also gave him a wave of sickening realisation that they could be a matter of minutes from reaching the capital. It was, after all, built around an oasis in the middle of the harsh, dry sand around them.

The others seemed to be drinking it in. He could only guess that most of them had never been to Altair – or anywhere outside Tiona – before, so seeing all this strangely dry land would have been very foreign. Yet unlike when he arrived in Tiona and was awe-struck by its beauty and health, they probably had a very different first impression of his home country. Casimir wished that they had been close enough to him so that he could explain that, despite how it might look, they were in no form of draught or starvation or crisis. His people had lives in these conditions for hundreds of years successfully and would continue to do so for hundreds of years to come.

Casimir felt his heart race when their capital city finally came into view. He had forgotten how much he truly adored his home during his time in Tiona, so he even surprised himself with his excited he was. The capital spread out wide and was completely enclosed by a stone wall to keep the sand out and the lush, green oasis inside. The heart of the city was a giant, crystal clear lake that kept everything and everyone inside it alive.

"Did you grow up in this place?" Casimir heard Hugh shout at him from nearby. The other male had dropped back a little to speak to him.

Casimir nodded and spoke a little bashfully, "My family owns most of this city."

"Most of the city? You can't be serious!"

Growing up, he hasn't realised how preposterous the idea of one family owning most of a giant city was, but it was the complete truth. From the stories he had read in his family's books, they had been the first people to discover the oasis in the desert and had settled there. As more people began to move to join them, they claimed the land as theirs and sold it off or loaned it out in small portions so they could maintain control until it eventually became the capital and the royal family took authority of the law in the city. It didn't stop his family from having a major influence.