Chapter 4 - The Breakout
The stable row was a war zone of splintered oak and shouting guards when Wyn and Kalen burst up from the archive stairwell.
The heavy iron gate of Kestrel’s enclosure had been torn completely off its hinges, bent like wet tin and cast aside against the opposite wall. The triple-linked chains lay snapped into twisted iron fragments across the flagstones.
A dozen guards with drawn pikes and heavy crossbows formed a chaotic, shouting semicircle around the empty pen, their torches illuminating the swirling dust and smoke.
“Where is he?!” a sergeant roared, brandishing a shortspear. “Find the beast before he breaches the outer armory!”
“He didn't go to the armory,” a voice called out from the upper hayloft.
Kalen and Wyn pushed through the ring of guards. Instructor Hollis stood at the edge of the loft stairs, pointing toward the open courtyard doors where the night sky was stained a deep, bruised orange.
“He went toward the eastern bastion,” Hollis said, her face pale as ash. “And he’s not alone.”
Wyn’s heart skipped a beat. She shoved past a pair of startled guards and bolted out into the central courtyard.
The scene outside was staggering.
Kestrel wasn't rampaging. He wasn't breathing fire down upon the barracks or attacking the terrified recruits scrambling for cover.
He was standing majestically in the center of the training yard, his massive black-gold wings half-spread to catch the wind. Cradled gently against his chest, clutched in the massive, curved talons of his front right foot, was a heavy iron lockbox—the very strongbox where Reev kept the master ledgers of the eastern trade routes and the illicit dragon-stone reserves.
Kestrel had torn the Chancellor’s private office straight out of the administrative tower like an eggshell to retrieve it.
And resting on the ground directly in front of the dragon, blocking his path to the main gates, stood Chancellor Reev, flanked by four elite royal battle-mages with crackling arcs of blue lightning dancing across their outstretched palms.
“Enough of this theater,” Reev shouted above the howling wind, his face twisted into an ugly mask of fury. His silver hair had come loose from its combs, whipping wildly around his face. “Mage-captain! Bring the beast down! I want him executed on the spot, regulations be damned!”
The lead battle-mage raised his hands, a sphere of blinding blue energy expanding rapidly between his palms, ready to unleash a bolt of raw, concentrated lightning straight into Kestrel’s chest.
Kestrel lowered his head, his amber eyes glowing with a cold, ancient intelligence. He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding until the black-gold scales clicked against one another like armor plates.
“No!”
Wyn’s scream cut through the courtyard, sharp and desperate.
Without thinking, without calculating the odds, she broke into a full sprint across the open flagstones, running directly between the battle-mages and the massive dragon.
“Wyn, get back!” Kalen roared, drawing his sword and sprinting after her.
Reev’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Fools! Kill the girl along with the beast!”
The battle-mage hesitated for a fraction of a second—just long enough for Kestrel to act.
The dragon didn't breathe fire. Instead, with a motion so fast it blurred the air, he swept his massive tail sideways, slamming it into the stone wall of the armory. A shower of heavy granite blocks rained down directly between the battle-mages and Wyn, shattering the pavement and disrupting the mages' concentration. The blue lightning sphere fizzled out into a useless shower of harmless sparks.
Before Reev could shout another order, Kestrel dropped his massive head down toward the ground, right in front of Wyn.
He didn't growl. He didn't bare his teeth.
He nudged her gently with the tip of his snout—the exact same motion he had used when kneeling in his pen two nights before.
A clear, unmistakable invitation.
Wyn looked down at the massive leather harness still dangling loosely from Kestrel’s shoulder—the very strap Colonel Maro had tried to force into place a week ago, ending in bloody failure.
She looked back toward the archway. Reev was scrambling out from beneath the fallen stone debris, his face purple with rage, drawing a heavy silver-plated pistol from his belt.
“Kalen!” Wyn shouted over the rising wind.
The deputy commandant skidded to a halt beside her, taking in the scene with terrifying clarity. He looked at the pistol in Reev’s hand, then down at the dragon offering his back to a stable girl.
Kalen didn't hesitate. He grabbed Wyn around the waist and heaved her upward, helping her scramble over the razor-sharp ridge of Kestrel’s shoulder plates until she tumbled securely into the deep groove behind the dragon’s neck.
“Hold on to the lead-ring!” Kalen roared, turning to face the oncoming guards with his sword raised high. “Get out of here, Wyn! Expose the ledgers!”
Kestrel let out a sound that shook the foundations of the Vaelen Academy—a roar so deep and resonant it sounded like the earth itself splitting open.
He kicked off the flagstones with his massive hind legs, launching four tons of muscle, scale, and iron straight up into the night sky.
Wings caught the howling mountain updrafts with a deafening CRACK that threw dust and debris across the entire courtyard.
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Wyn squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers locked into the heavy steel anchor ring of the harness, her face pressed hard against Kestrel’s warm, vibrating neck scales as the ground fell away beneath them.
Below, Chancellor Reev fired his pistol into the dark, the bullet sparking harmlessly off the stone far below them, while the academy faded into a tiny cluster of flickering torches swallowed by the vast, silent shadow of the eastern mountains.
