Page 170 of Ashborne: Defiance

59. Land Hot

SOUNDTRACK: The Bottom by Daughtry

~ GRACE ~

At first, I hoped he’d just chosen to wheel left like I had, and he’d changed his line to make certain we were well spaced from the other two, but he never turned off. He continued to keep his dragon wing-tip with Koa.

Frustrated, I gestured with one hand, shooing him away. “Scatter!” I shouted.

“I am!”

“No! It means we all go in different directions!”

“We did! We’re away from them!”

“Yes, but not in pairs. All of us—”

“Flameborne, descend! Land hot!”

Kennik cursed.

Descend was a basic command—drop toward the ground. But land hot changed the game.

It was a directive given for only two reasons: Either a dragon or their rider was wounded and needed to be on the ground in the shortest possible time without killing themselves, or we were under fire from weapons on the ground, and needed to get out of sight.

Either way, we weren’t to wait. We weren’t to shift line to the launch hollow which we knew was only a minute’s flight away. We were to look for the nearest possible space large enough to land a dragon, and drop into it without delay.

Which would have been fine. There was a narrow, sloping clearing, similar to the spot where I’d been Acknowledged, just inside the coastline. A rough V-shape where the forest didn’t grow, that was long enough for Koa to land. And it was on my direct line.

The problem was, Kennik hadn’t scattered. He and I were flying the same line.

And apparently, of all the instructions today, he remembered what land hot, meant. Because just as quickly as I urged Koa to the ground, he did the same with Conn.

But there wasn’t wide enough space between the trees here for two dragons, flapping aggressively to slow themselves for landing. If we both tried to land at the same time, our dragons would collide.

“Go right!” I screamed at him. “You were supposed to scatter! Go find a different line!”

“Fuck off! I know what the instruction is.”

‘Firebird, Conn chitters.’

I looked at Kennik’s blue dragon. His eyes rolled and he screamed, but he continued to flap with urgency.

The dragons wouldn’t intervene until or unless it was life-threatening.

This was about to get bad.

‘Koa, he took the wrong line. We weren’t supposed to be landing together.’

‘There is different clearing—’

‘But if we move our line, we won’t have followed instruction. We’ll fail!’ I glared at Kennik. “Find your own line! This was mine!”

“You find a different line!” He leaned forward and Conn screamed. Koa responded, both dragons picking up pace.

No, no, no!

I looked over my shoulder, but the officer was too far back now, I couldn’t see his expression.