Earp moved fairly carefully over the ground, very gingerly considering the not overly large body to put its foot on. The open ground meant they’d have no obstructions unless you counted tumbleweeds and scrub grass. The cow pasture had no barriers.

  Day tried one last time to dissuade Bodi from it. “You know better than to try this. I know you will take care, but please, we do not need you to lift a dragon.”

  The dragon put its claws on his back. Only one foot could fit. He went shifting it about with the razor claws scraping up foot deep scores into the dirt.

  “Are you sure?” Earp asked, once he had settled on placing a midpoint of the claws on Bodi’s back. “Is this your final course of action?”

  “I can do it,” Bodi yelled at the dragon. Reluctantly, and uncomfortably, the dragon rested its opened claws upon Bodi back. The air huffed out, but it kept coming back in and out.

  “Don’t be so tentative,” complained Bodi face into the dirt, mushed into the ground. “Hurry up! Before my potions effectiveness begins to wear down!”

  By micro movements, the dragon dropped its talons. Carefully opening up the locked claws until it rested the weight of just its left leg on Bodi.

  The young orc grunted in frustration but then added, “Continue! Faster!”

  The dragon hesitated, unsure of what he had to do next.

  In a fit of frustration on the ground, Bodi pushed himself off the ground and picked up the giant claw, hefting the dragon up into the air like lifting an awkward weight. The dragon gave a squawk flapping in the air as it tried to right itself and unusual pressure of the creature below it. Bodi staggered, buffeted by both the wind of the wings and tremendous weight his arms could not carry.

  Frantically, the spells flashed out. Nettle tried too to hold up the dragon for even a moment. Bodi, even without the full weight, caved under the pressure going to his knees while the dragon failed and squawked its anger.

  “This is most unfontier! I am going to crush you! Stupid youngling. Unhand my claw. I am sitting on you, not getting lifted up into flight! Desist from bucking my stead of an orc. If I stopped flapping, you’d be in great danger. Fool.”

  The orc collapsed under the dragon, but as he did, he rolled the weight of the dragon’s enormous body down over his head and onto his back instead of arms, with the help of flickering neon green magical shields from Nettle, Bodi steadied himself upon the dirt on hands and knees. The dragon slowly adjusted himself into an upright position keeping his wings out for balance. Earp slowly let the weight settle on the orc’s back balanced with one front foot on his back.

  Around the orc, spells were sizzling and cracking, appearing and flickering in and out. Nettle focused entirely. His eyes turned fully white and only his fingers flickering in and out at such speed that Kriti could see spells being woven to shore up or replace as chunks of kinetic shields held for only seconds before shattering under the great weight of a massive dragon laying upon them, yet he created another under it producing many, many shield that held for only seconds around Bodi.

  “I declare,” exclaimed the dragon. Before fluting a laugh that rocked Holstiens. “I’m orc riding! I’m orc riding! This is the most incredible thing. Not in the air, but not the ground. Well, little beast, you must move with me somehow. Onward, horsie!”

  The dragon kept his wings flickering to maintain position, but it was clearly balancing, not flying. The buffeting wind had gone.

  By now the whole group besides Nettle was shouting, “Let him off. Let him go!”

  “That’s quite enough!”

  “You’ve done it, Bodi. Now let him flutter way. Please, let him go. That’s quite impressive enough.”

  The orc ignored their general exclamations. The spells shattered around his ears made too much noise to hear them. He wiggled. Then groaning, he lifted one arm an inch forward, then a leg a single centimeter forward.

  The dragon hooted. “I say forward ahead. Out oars. On with you my great big boat. Forward into the forests. Fly, my orc friend, fly!”

  Inhaling between the ever increasingly loud sound of the spells cracking, then exploding, the strain on Bodi increased. He shuffled forward his second hand, and then slowly one knee then the next knee.

  They’d gone into silence now, staring at both the spells being obliterated and Bodi, stubbornly holding up a dragon with his quivering body. The immense weight of Earp became readily apparent as he could only just make the tiny movement forward. Sweat poured off him from the intense exertion.

  The dragon for his part had started whooping and hollering enough to wake anything in thirty miles with the echoing boom of both laughter and excitement.

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  “This brings me back to my days as but a dragonling, when my mother used to carry us on the wing and my stubby wings could only fly so far and yet here I ma now. Ma, look at me! I made it. I’m riding a two legged. Yeehaw!”

  He gave great hollering hoots of laughter and fluttered his wings about to maintain his position. Finally, as he chortled and shook his head, the dragon turned his head down looking at the orc.

  “Oh, do go on!” He explained. “Yes, yes. This is the dreams we all once had and now can never regain again. Go young mustang. Giddy up.”

  But the spells were becoming louder and holding even less of a time, firing out blasts over and over again. The Fae was plastered with sweat and seemingly visibly growing weaker as they watched. His body shriveling under the sheer expense of magic.

  The orc too was shaking panting, and sweating rivers from his temples and corded muscles. His arms wavered back and forth nearing the brink of failure.

  The dragon hooted. and then gave one short hop off him. He jumped one tiny hand span over, slamming into the dirt and putting heavy weight into it, tearing the hard packed dirt into a deep gouge. The dragon carefully brought his body back down to all four claws.

  “Wouldn’t due to kill you over it! I’m a good sport and a gentle beast at heart.”

  Both Nettle and Bodi collapsed together, their strength completely sapped. If the dragon had not decided on his own to release them from the rules, they both would have died for their efforts. Collapsed to the ground, Nettle’s fingertips grew feeble and discolored into purple.

  Bodi flopped down to the ground, steaming with the heat from his body into the cooler earth, and he gagged in massive breaths, before slowly, painfully, rolling himself over. His body bathed with sweat.

  “Good show!” exclaimed the dragon. “But you lot really should have stopped a lot sooner. I would have given you however long you wanted a flight just by lifting me up and wiggling a hair forward. Nonetheless, I have seen you two both together are quite formidable even in your folly.”

  He regarded Nettle and then waggled his big head. “It took two of you to do this, though. Seeing how I rode them both in their own way, both must go on the flight themselves. The bargain would not be correct without both parties who participated receiving their own due.”

  He left the orc to the ministrations of Day and shuffled over to Nettle.

  The huge dragon shook his head. “I have never expected someone also immortal to fulfill my bargain nor even attempt. It would be a great pity for death to come from it after all. Especially as one bravely chose to enter the pact against his own wishes.”

  The dragon leaned over Nettle. His toothed jaws looming. It gently bit its own tongue and dropped a single blood droplet down over the middle of Nettle’s stomach.

  Dragons and Fae were too long-lived species not known to interact favorably very often. For a Fae to be touched by dragon blood was a great boon to their own abilities and usually came with ever so many curses from a dead dragon. Often restrictive and deadly rules.

  “I mark thee blooded by a dragon, but not as a dragon slayer. Nettlebaum and whatever rest of your title there must be. I dub thee a dragon friend of Trail Boss Earp, the cowboy.”

  “I would do the same for the orc who so heroically lifted me and give me back those once lost memories of my childhood, but I understand to blood stain an orc is much less pleasant connotations for them. It would certainly not resort their health.”

  As he spoke, Nettle indeed began to sit up. The normal grayish color returning to his fingers and a strange hissing sizzle of magic over taking them all. Dragon friend was a rare thing to be indeed and blooded by one even more powerful.

  “To the orc, I will give him my talon to call me and also the position of first rider. As well as his choice of my treasures assuming, he can ever get up the strength to stand again or visit my hoards. Nonetheless, if he lives or dies, you all will be welcome visitors. It is not my way to let someone see my home. Such a gift of laughter and memories. Indeed! Things I had once thought lost to someone of my age. But the very young do so help the very old remember how to live life again.”

  He turned back to Bodi, and like a large cat stretched out a back leg to chew his foot. Biting off the smallest of his talon in the middle of his claws, he nipped a hole in the front, and he placed it beside the orc. Earp leaned over Bodi.

  “I do not know if you are the very bravest or the very dumbest, but I delight in those that surprise me. Now, now, let’s see it, up on his feet. It would not due for me to leave a friend not knowing his condition.

  Day’s rapid ministrations of various colored liquids and poultices on the arms had at least turned the exhausted orc from completely dead to a slightly overconfident grin. With the help of Day, they lifted him up under the arms, still sweating a heaving in and out air like a bellows of a words master with many apprentices.

  “How long will we get to fly?” he asked the dragon.

  “Well, for your lot, I may make a small exception. One time as long as you want.” There was a gleam in the dragon’s eyes. “If you want to fly again, you’ll have to lift me into the air and this time I will not try to make it easier for you. To truly this is least of all levels in dragon riding. I recommend buying much better potions and preparing beforehand.”

  Bodi coughed and laughed. “I don’t think I shall ever try that again. Much too risky should a single spell have failed.”

  “Indeed,” the dragon agreed with a slight hint of humor in his tone. “If they had failed, I would have killed you, you know. Not intentionally, mind, but there is no way to be set enough to save you in that situation. You truly put your life on the line over pride?”

  “Not pride.” Bodi jutted out his jaw, belligerent. “I knew I could do it.”

  The dragon gave a finally gleeful chortle and wooshed off into the sky, calling back. “When you wish to visit my home, I’ll send you a portal if you so desire, but not a portal anywhere else I am afraid. You have free passage over these trails. I will tell all the boys.”

  “Where do you live,” Laural called after him.

  “The mountain!” the dragon shouted to them.

  “The mountain, of course,” muttered Laural, “there are a lot of mountains.”

  Away Earp winged, leaving them with the same discussion.

  “We have no idea what mountains she’s talking, about do we?” Laural clarified.

  “So, we can call a dragon by whistling into his talon and visit his home where it is and maybe that will be enough?” Kriti shrugged.

  “We can hope.” Day had gotten more items from her cart and clinked as she moved. “Can I test that container?”

  Bodi handed it to her. But she glared at it. “Too empty, but I’ll find a use for it.”

  "Vague instructions on powerful items are the worst." Kriti thought but didn’t say aloud.

  Mistrusted (Mistworld Series, Book 3)

  by NeoRyu777

  When given a choice between right and necessary, what is the best answer?

  Trust is a resource she’s running out of.

  Mistbound is now available on Amazon!

  Mistwarped is now available for preorder:

  https://www.patreon.com/c/Mistbound