Fire Blazed

“Swing round to starboard!” shouted the first officer of the airship, Rise.

Lux swayed easily with the movement of the deck as his grandpa, Captain Thomas spun the wheel quickly and swung the ship around in a tight arc. The loud guttural roar of the beast which was the focus of today’s hunt could be heard as it found its path to freedom suddenly cut off.

Peering over the edge of the deck railing, Lux saw the massive wings of the wyvern beat furiously to halt its forward motion. The beast roared again at the vessel blocking its way when abruptly, a huge net shot out the side of the airship and tangled around the left wing of the majestic creature. With its left wing caught and dangling uselessly against its body, the wyvern started to plummet towards the ground, shrieking, its right wing flapping desperately to slow its descent.

“Lux, get back to the generator, we are running low!”

“Yes grandpa!” Lux ran back, rolling his eyes when he saw the arched eyebrow of his grandpa as he passed by. He knew Thomas prefered to have Lux call him Captain while they were on the deck but Lux just didn’t see the point.

Nimble as a cat, Lux moved to the aft of the ship and quickly grasped the crystal orb sitting on a silver staff. The staff was firmly attached to the deck of the airship, with fine, silvery lines running continuously in series of runes across the deck and up the thick cables attached to the rear of the floating gas chamber above. Shouts from the crew could be heard mixed with the cries of the wyvern, the cacophony loud enough to stir the dead. Lux forced himself to concentrate on his job, closing his eyes in an effort to shut out all the distractions. He felt the smooth flow of his blood being pumped around his body and the gentle flow of mana that went with it. Guiding the flow, he directed it towards his two clenched hands, speeding up the flow by will and feeling the mana welled up in his palms before ejecting out.

As it gushed out, Lux felt it absorbed by the crystal and even with his eyes shut, he knew the stone was glowing softly with renewed power. Following the flow, the young man could sense it move along the spidery silver drawn across the deck and up the cables, where he knew his grandpa will then use it to power the turning bursters, small compact pipes which pumped air to the sides in order to rotate the airship.

Lux looked up and sure enough, the rear starboard turning burster was pumping a jet of magically condensed air to quickly turn the craft to the left, allowing the airship to follow the wyvern down to the ground. Even as it fell, a few more nets shot out from Rise and tangled around the creature. Lux could hear shouts confirming the downed state of the wyvern.

A quick command from Thomas and the first mate took the wheel, freeing the captain to move up and observe the situation unfolding at the front of the airship. Lux’s noticed the excited bustle of movement at the bow and he had to quickly close his eyes a second time to concentrate on slowing his racing pulse due to forcing mana out of his body, his hands moving up to wipe a few beads of sweat from his forehead. The mages in the seclusive country Grandios could use their magic without any seeming adverse effect but for batteries like himself, magic usage always lead to exhaustion and in serious cases, unconsciousness or death. After several minutes when he felt his body returned to its former state, he opened his eyes and strolled forward to join his grandpa.

As the airship descended down and got close to the ground, several eager hunters hurdled over the railing quickly and ran towards the wyvern, which shrieked in defiance. Feeling the hull of the airship grated along the ground, Thomas and Lux, along with the rest of the hunters, vaulted over the side as well.

Closing behind the hunters surrounding the wyvern, Lux could hear one of them shouting to the others. “Concentrate the ropes around the head, the claws can’t reach them there!”

“Half of you, follow me round to its back. We need to lash that tail down! Quickly!” Thomas bellowed at the hunters behind him

The aforementioned tail thrashed frantically as the wyvern felt the new restraints pulling at it. Lux quickly joined a group of struggling men who were desperately holding onto one of several thick ropes. Together with a mighty pull, they managed to bring the tail down and a few others quickly went forward to drive stakes into the ground, the stakes crisscrossing over the ropes and placing additional pressure in restraining the powerful tail.

While holding the tail down with all their strength, Lux reflected that this would be one of their greatest captures once they succeeded. A wyvern was a beast which most hunters avoided. Being a distant cousin of the dragons, wyvern lived at high altitudes and had through thousands of years, forgoed their front legs for a lighter body more suited for flying and gliding on the thinner air of the upper atmosphere. Their habitat included high snowy mountains to searing tops of volcanoes and it was quite common to see them around the lowlands surrounding their mountain nests, hunting for food in ones or twos.

This one, a young male, Lux could see was very tired. Its brown scales were glittering in the telltale sign that indicated it was covered in sweat. The beast was so spent, its attempts at blowing jets of flames at the hunters only resulted in a plume of smoke. Even so, the teams of hunters in charge of securing the tail could not let up for even a moment.

Lux felt his own sweat forming and he wished the teams in charge of the head could speed things up. He could see his grandpa moving cautiously towards the base of the tail, a large pike with gummy tranquilizer coating the blade in hand. Lux felt his heart beating harder as it always did when his grandpa was in a dangerous situation. The young man’s breath caught as Thomas suddenly lunged forwards and stabbed the pike through the tough scales of the wyvern and it roared in pain. Lux only had time to note that his grandpa was clear from the danger zone when his attention was diverted back to the rope in his hands. The rope jerked violently as the immense creature attempted to turn towards its attacker. The deafening roar made Lux wince with pain but his hand were fully occupied with maintaining a firm grip on the rough, braided rope.

The front team took advantage of the wyvern’s distracted state to loop a few more coils of rope around its head and as it turned back on its initial tormentors, they pulled fast on the lines and dragged the head down to the ground.

With its head and tail secured against the ground, the wyvern thrashed its unbound right wing desperately to no avail. The struggle gradually weakened as the tranquiliser took effect. Lux watched as the free wing slowly ceased its movement, and as one the hunters all slumped down in relief knowing the hunt was over. Large yellow eyes followed the movement of the hunters as they slowly began securing all the tie downs but even those bright eyes slowly shutted as sleep took over.

Lux pulled back to give the hunters room to work and joined his grandpa standing near Rise. He was still green to the ways of hunting and some tasks are best left to more seasoned hands. The wyvern will now have to be secured to the ship, most likely dangling underneath the main ship as the huge size would take up too much space on deck. Lux watched intently, running through the methods he thought would be best suited for the situation and comparing it to how the hunters were actually fastening the wyvern.

All beasts were brought to markets scattered throughout Tesarat sedated in order to increase its value. A living beast could replenish its mana and when it was eventually killed for parts, those would fetch a lot more than if the beasts were killed straight after a hunt had expanded its energy. Sometimes, a rare beast would even be bought alive by a rich beast collector and something like a wyvern always drew a crowd at the markets, increasing sales.

A number of hunters very carefully removed the large net that took down the wyvern, unwinding it from the left wing while the others watched the creature for any sign of resistance. Once that was done, the two wings were folded down in its natural retracted position and bound tightly against the body. The usual beast of similar size Thomas’ crew hunted were mammoths, large, tusked herbivores which traveled in herds. Those beast have limited magical abilities but the huge size meant they were a very profitable choice for their hunts, the fur hide usually used to make coats with mild protection from magic. Compared to the mammoths, the wyvern was slightly larger but Lux noticed the usual expression on his grandpa’s lined face and he assumed that the additional size won’t be a problem.

“The wyvern may be bigger but it is much lighter than the mammoths.” Thomas supplied, reading the glance Lux shot his way. Before the youth could reply, a shout stole their attention.

“Cap! There is a man here!” A young hunter told the two who made their way towards the commotion. Lux recognised Pete, one of the few younger crew onboard Rise. Being few in numbers, the younger trainees, as Thomas like to call them, knew each other well and Lux greeted Pete with a wave.

“Not sure about that.” Thomas muttered, watching Pete hop from one foot to the other in excitement. Lux sniggered but stifled it immediately as his grandpa swung his gaze at him. Pete realised he was being made fun of a second later and glared at his friend before replying.

“What I meant is there is a man clutched in the wyvern’s claws.”

Turning as one, they all watched as a few hunters extracted the man from the sharp claws and each grimaced at the bloody state of the man. Large gashes were still bleeding sluggishly and looking at the pale face lolling to one side they all feared the worse. Thomas was about to voice their thoughts when Lux suddenly gasped.

“That man is alive, I can sense it…” Lux trailed off as he and the others realised what that meant. Looking closer, they all realised the man was wearing robes favoured by people from Grandios, a country of magicians who have been at war with Tesarat for as long as anyone could remember.

“He is Grandian!” Lux exclaimed. Thomas peered at the sleeve of the robe and added to the list of surprises.

“And he is one of their high mages!”