High altitude travel

I struggled to read the end of the scroll with the tears blurring my sight. Egan simply rested one of his wings against my back for support. He too was shaken by all he had just learned. It took me a few minutes to calm my sobs and regain some composure.

There was a map in the tube and it shows an ocean with a few islands to the west and a continent to the west. Knowing that we are on the island where the ancient city of dragon riders resided, I could easily locate us by seeing an island marked with the name of Vroengard . It is the one that is the most northwest of the map. However I have no idea where the place where the elves reside is.

I spent some time analyzing the map of the continent. On the entire west coast there is a mountain range, the southwest and the center are desert. In the south there is a huge mountain range and the whole north is made up of a huge forest. The rest consists of plains and green hills with a few scattered lakes on the sides of the continent.

Come to think of it, our island is mostly forest with some small mountains. The place on the mainland most similar to our island is the huge forest to the north. I woke up in a forest and the elves built a village there with hearths in the trees. The elves clearly seem at home in the forest environment so that's where we'll go to check first.

The problem is that we must remain discreet since the dragon riders should not be numerous after their war. Seeing a new dragon is bound to attract attention and since my mother sacrificed herself to make me forget about dragon riders led by a human, I wouldn't risk being discovered.

I shared my deductions with Egan and he was more than happy to meet other dragons.

We decided to practice flying at high altitude to make the trip above the clouds and not be visible during our trip.

Egan's POV:

Our discovery shook us up quite a bit, even though I was far from being as touched by this story as my little brother…well, Eldar, I have to get used to calling him by his name now.

Learning that our species were at war is a real surprise, I would never think of hurting Eldar so I find it hard to understand what could have led our two species to hate each other to the point of risking mutual extinction. Learning that we are of royal blood does not matter to me, we are us and knowing who our parents are does not change anything. What worries me, on the other hand, is to learn that we will be targeted by the rebel dragon riders as soon as we are discovered.

The idea of finally meeting other people, other dragons fills me with impatience. I can't wait to see how tall our elders are and what our females look like.

It was therefore with enormous enthusiasm that I began our high altitude flight training . My excitement was however quickly dampened, flying with my partner on my back has not been a problem for a long time but the altitude changes everything!

The more we climb, the thinner the air becomes, flying at cloud height and a torture, the air becomes thin, it is difficult to breathe and the humidity of the clouds settles on my wings and makes me even heavier. So we had to fly higher if we didn't want to be soaked all the way and the air then became so thin that I gasped deeply to be able to breathe. The lack of air makes my head spin and makes me dazed, plus the force of the wind is much stronger at this altitude, flying that high is a shitty idea but we have no choice if Selene's message is just we must not be spotted.

As we tried Eldar used his magic to help me during the flight. It forms an air shield to protect us from the wind and draws air into its shield to allow us to breathe more easily.

With this new method we managed to circle the island once at the right altitude and in one go but when I landed we were both shaking with fatigue.

It takes about 3 to 5 times around the island in distance to reach the forest deep enough to descend to a more comfortable altitude without being able to be seen by what is outside the forest and thus be able to scan what's on the ground to find the elves.

Its shield makes the flight very pleasant but it consumes far too much energy. During our next attempts, he made his shield less powerful, it now only filtered part of the wind, just enough to not make flying too difficult. With the Energy gain, he took the opportunity to provide me with the difference in energy and feed my muscles without me having to draw on my physical strength.

He was able to last about 14 hours in these conditions until he fell asleep forcing me to take over. We thought of this method to be able to fly continuously because we had to hold between 4 5 days flight. The problem is that once his shield was removed, it was far too exhausting for me to fly in those conditions.

We kept thinking and testing our ideas until we found a method that allowed us to fly for 5 days. Eldar maintains his shield for 7 hours while supplying me with energy for flight then sleeps for 5 hours while maintaining the shield while sleeping. It also took him several months to manage to maintain a spell during his sleep delaying the date of the flight.

Then I take over and do all the work alone for 5 hours, I can't last more than 7 hours flying at this altitude without his help even with his shield lightened.

Once he wakes up he takes over allowing me to recover my strength. We manage to hold this cycle for 5 days until the thirst and the hunger are too strong and make us fall from exhaustion.

There was always the problem of orientation and we had to repeatedly analyze the topology of the island by comparing it to the map to be sure of the direction to take. We were now ready to make the trip.

The day before our expedition we ate and drank all we could, taking only a few buckets of closed water so that I could hydrate myself. I would exert myself a lot physically, I would need to hydrate myself more than Egan who remained motionless all the way.

We left at sunrise, enjoying the sun rising behind us and lighting our way west.

Once we reached the altitude we will be traveling on for the next few days, I began to fly Eldar-powered west, braving the wind and cold. We did not leave this altitude for 4 days.

There is just one problem that we hadn't anticipated: the wind is much stronger over the ocean. Egan had to compensate by fortifying his shield but it wore him down much faster than expected. However, he insisted on respecting the hourly cycles that we had decided on, saying that he had lowered his duration limits a little in anticipation of this kind of unforeseen problem. He did hold on but is now completely exhausted. His energy has already begun eating away at his body to keep fueling me and his shield.

At sunset on the 4th day I started the descent as we had planned which makes flying much less tiring and I started scanning the forest for elves while continuing to scan the sky looking for dragons.

Egan took advantage of the descent to fall asleep and cut his shield to regain his strength, he is at the end of his rope. I was then able to enjoy the scenery while flying above a huge forest with trees as far as the eye could see in each direction. These trees are even bigger than those on the island, there is even a tree in the distance which is gigantic even compared to the other trees around it, it far exceeds all the other goshawks.

I've been flying for well over an hour when suddenly whistles sound and a searing pain breaks out in my wings.

It is in a roar of pain that I begin to lose altitude.