#dragonweek2017

“Armory.” Wally’s eyes gleamed. “They’ve got a present for you there.”

Jesse stiffened, eyes widening as she took in the cocky grin on Wally’s face and the way that his chest was puffed up. “You mean they-”

“Yup.” Wally flicked his tail happily. “And you didn’t hear it from me-but there’s someone in town who’s looking for a dragon. A rider.”

She pounced on him, rolling him under her and pinning him down to the ground. His wings thumped uselessly against her, gentle enough not to hurt but hard enough to almost buffet her off. They were both members of the same species-multiple wings and stripe-like markings set them apart from the rest of their flight, along with Barry, Jay, Jesse’s father Harry (although his second pair of wings was more like fins than anything), and Eliza.

Jesse’s long tail flicked back and forth against the grass as she bent down to press her muzzle to Wally’s nose. “And how is your rider?”

Wally churred in amusement. “He’s fine. Waiting for us back at the armory. C’mon, let’s go.” He launched Jesse off with a powerful (and carefully controlled) kick of his hind legs, rising to his feet and launching himself into the air with a ripple of wings. Jesse followed, the two of them spiralling higher and higher into the sky. “Race you!”

The two of them took off, swooping and diving around each other as each one struggled to stay in the lead. Wally held it up until the last minute, when he sharply angled his wings upward and let Jesse fall in ahead of him. She landed with a thump and turned on him. “That’s cheating! You went easy on me!”

“It’s your hatchday.” Wally puffed up his chest. “Besides, we already know that I’m always going to be faster than you. ‘S why I’m a racer and you’re not.”

Jesse mock growled. “Why you-”

“Ahem.”

Jesse squeaked a little and looked at her dad, wings drooping a little like a hatchling that had just been caught sneaking out for the first time. Harry flicked his charcoal grey tail, the arrowhead tip shining like it had been polished. It probably had been-his rider, Tess, was famously attentive. At least compared to Harry himself, who wouldn’t notice if he was covered in mud from horns to tail.

“Sorry, dad,” Jesse huffed, before brightening a little. “Wally said there was a rider looking for a dragon.”

“There is,” Harry huffed. “Not my first choice, but-”

“It doesn’t matter whose choice it is,” Jay said mildly, tail wrapped around his paws. Joan, his rider and his lifelong companion, stroked his wings and nodded in agreement.

“It’s a bond. Who knows if it’ll actually take or not.” She winked at Jesse. “But I have a feeling it’s going to. None of us were expecting Wally’s rider, were we?” Wally bristled a little and Joan laughed. “Don’t worry, I still love her almost as much as you do.”

Jesse bounced a little, looking up at the tall walls of the armoury. “Where’s the rest of the flight?”

“Inside. I think Cisco’s getting you your present. And Barry and Iris are off bringing in your potential rider.” Jay’s ears twitched a little. “Cisco worked on it all week. Barry had to practically force him to sleep.”

Jesse bounced on the pads of her paws. She knew what it was, or at least the basics of it-every dragon in their flight got armor on their 20th hatchday. It had been made by a certain family for generations, at least until the massacre that had happened only a few years before Jesse was born. Now Cisco had stepped up to take on the duty, and he was damn good at it, too.

As if he knew she had been thinking about him, Cisco bounced out of the armory, tail curled happily and chest puffed out. He purred when he saw Jesse. “C’mon. I wanna show you your gift.”

She shivered in anticipation and followed him. Harry followed immediately behind her, ever protective of his only hatchling. Wally followed after him, making annoyed grumbling sounds at Harry’s dour attitude until the older dragon’s bladed tail whacked him lightly across the nose. Not enough to actually hurt, but enough to let him know that he would have to be quieter about his complaints in the future.

Cisco flared his wings as they reached the center of the armory where he worked. The bioluminescent stripes on the bottoms of his wings lit up brightly, sending ghostly shadows onto the walls as his partners, a human named Curtis and a human named Jax, helped him tug a large (clearly enchanted) set of armor down off of the table and onto the floor. Curtis beamed at her, and Jesse smiled back. She’d always liked how Cisco treated humans who weren’t riders. With respect.

“We practically made this from scratch,” Jax explained. There were bags under his eyes, but there was also a huge smile on his face and the tips of his fingers were smoking. “It’s cloth and magic, there’s nothing metal about it-it’s just like Barry’s armor, only there’s another enchantment woven into it that makes it a little more fireproof.”

It was yellow and red, although mostly red, and as Jesse nosed it she could feel the sparks of magic still settling into the seams. She looked up at Cisco from her place on the floor (and when had she decided to lie down?) with wide delighted eyes. “How do I put it on?”

As Cisco helped her, Jesse couldn’t stop herself from bouncing in place with excitement. Jax rapped her muzzle with his knuckles. “Stay still, or it’s going to fall off. Do you have any idea how many times Ronnie has had to come in needing repairs for his armor because he couldn’t stay still while putting it on?”

Jesse reluctantly stopped bouncing, so excited she could hardly breathe as Cisco muttered a spell and flicked his tail, settling the last pieces of the armor in place. He moved back, eyeing the armor appreciatively but still critically. “It might need a few adjustments.” He pushed the lever that was used to open the roof of the armory, making the doors on the roof whir and hum as they shifted open. “Well, why don’t you test it out?”

Jesse swallowed. The first flight with your armor was ceremonial, it was an experience-old legends said that the armor was a living thing. Even if Jesse knew better than to listen to fairy stories like that… It still sent shivers up her wings. She crouched down, bracing her tail against the floor as she tensed her wings. Wally moved as if he was going to take flight with her, until Jax set a foot down on his friend’s wing. “Don’t. I know Iris flew with you, but that was different.”

“How was it different?” Wally asked, blinking down at Jax.

Jax grinned. “Nobody can tell Iris what not to do. And besides-that was when there were still skirmishes on the border. She’ll be fine-”

He was cut off by a whoosh of air as Jesse launched herself into the air, whooping in delight as the magic added extra power to her wings. Jax smiled even wider at the jealous expression on Wally’s face. “Don’t worry, you’re still faster. It’s just a little charm to keep flight steadier and more sustained-I’m adding it to your armor as soon as we get the chance.”

Jesse spiraled above the clouds, gulping in the thin air and laughing as she did a barrel roll, wings snapping out as she drifted to a standstill. But only for a moment before she was plunging back to earth, shrieking with joy at the feeling of wind under her wings and tousling through her mane. Jesse’s bladed tail snapped downwards along with her wings as she climbed back up again through the air, wings finding an updraft that she rested on for a moment.

The armor seemed to hum, vibrating along with Jesse as she took deep breaths. This was exhilarating. She could easily see why Barry and Jay rarely took their armor off. It was an incredible feeling.

Cocking her head, Jesse could see the distant red figure that must’ve been Barry (who else could it have been?) flying toward the armory. With her sharp eyes, Jesse could see a small figure clinging to his back. Behind him, Iris’s deep purple scales flashed in the sunlight. Which meant that the person on Barry’s back must’ve been her potential future rider.

Barry stepped into the lab, pausing a moment to take a cursory glance around the room.  To his relief, Julian wasn’t here yet - the other CSI had said something yesterday about coming in late, so if he’d still managed to make it here before Barry, he would have been insufferable.  

Besides, being alone in the office had its perks.  

Barry set his messenger bag down on his desk and closed his eyes, reaching for the part of his awareness where his Tether was connected.  Telastra, he thought into the quiet space.   Are you there?  

His dragon’s response was immediate, lacking the drowsy sluggishness that was usually present in the early mornings.  Barry sensed a brief undercurrent of warm regard, tinged with exasperation, before Telastra slipped from her side of liminal space and out into the physical world.  

Barry leaned back against the desk and waited until he felt Telastra’s full attention on him before speaking again.  His dragon was fond of stretching when she stepped out into reality; apparently her dimension didn’t adhere to the same physical norms as far as gravity went, which seemed feasible enough to Barry.  He sometimes heard other dragontethers complain about their companions’ stretching and grooming rituals, but by this point he’d learned that the best way to avoid tripping over an invisible dragon was simply to stay put until Telastra had finished working the kinks out of her limbs.  

You were late to work again, Telastra chided, and Barry felt a puff of warm breath on his hand.   That’s the second time this week.  It’s only Thursday, Barry.  

“That means it’s almost the end of the week,” Barry rebutted.  He preferred speaking out loud to Telastra when he could; most people weren’t bothered by it, especially when he and Telastra were out walking on the streets, but it could be a bit on-the-nose in the office.  Julian in particular tended to get his back up about it, which had always annoyed Barry, since Julian was a dragontether too, but what could you do?  He reached out a hand, palm facing outward, and Telastra obligingly bumped her nose into it.  “Are you hungry yet?  Or is this gonna be a hoarding day?”

Hoarding.  You ran so many tests yesterday that I couldn’t eat another bite even if I wanted to, the dragon said wryly.   Why are there so many packed together?  

“Singh has finally decided that we’ve done enough research on whether your diet affects test results,” Barry decided, scratching along Telastra’s brow ridges.  “Spoiler alert - it does not.  He’s decided he wants us to help work through some of the evidence backlog.”  

He sensed a flicker of incomprehension from his dragon and offered up the relevant memories of his discussion with Captain Singh; Telastra sifted through them rapidly before retreating from his headspace.   A good cause indeed, she declared, moving away from Barry’s hand.   I hope the captain is aware that I am not actually causing the tests to run any faster?  

“I was able to explain.  I promise I do realize you’re just eating the elapsed time,” Barry said, moving over to the lab bench and trusting that his dragon would follow without accidentally tripping him, “but to the casual observer, it just looks like we can run a two-hour test in four minutes.”

That is a large stack of manila folders, Telastra commented dryly.   It is double the size of our usual stack.  The captain is expecting us to run all of these tests today, I assume.  

“The hazards of being too good at your job,” Barry said, rolling his eyes fondly as he began preparing the first sample.  

Telastra could crack as many jokes as she wanted to, but she and Barry really had gotten lucky.  Dragons preyed on a wide variety of metaphysical abstractions - Barry had heard of dragons that ate love, honor, truth, compassion, generosity, even things as obscure as chivalry - but seldom did the diet of a dragontether’s partner prove as easy to integrate into everyday life as Telastra’s had.  Time, as an abstraction, was relatively difficult for a dragon to eat.  It was something that humankind cared a great deal about, so there was plenty of energy available - the more of humanity’s collective consciousness that was dedicated to an abstraction, the more energy existed for dragons to consume.  On the other hand, humans tended to leech most of the surrounding time energy from the air as they hurried from one place to another - free time was always in short supply.  

Feeding Telastra had been challenging when they had first bonded.  Barry had been eleven, fresh off the death of his parents, when they had met, and neither of them had really been prepared.  Children were rarely approached by dragons - numerous studies had indicated that most dragons approached humans who were in their late teenage years, and for a while Joe hadn’t even believed that Barry had tethered himself to a dragon.  

For a while, Barry had been terrified that his baby dragon would starve to death, especially since she refused to steal any time energy from him, even when she needed food desperately.  And god, was Telastra stubborn - she hadn’t even been willing to eat the time that Barry spent asleep, in spite of the fact that he’d offered it to her multiple times.  After a harrowing period of trial and error, Barry and Telastra had managed to find a few relatively safe methods of extracting enough time energy to keep her fed.  Candles were a favorite - Barry could light a candle, and Telastra could eat the time it took for the candle’s wick to burn through.  They’d completely burned through one of Joe’s nice holiday candles, but the experiment had given Telastra a good forty hours’ worth of time energy in the span of ten minutes.  

Things had been smoother from then on.  Candles had gotten them through high school, and college had given them plenty of opportunities to experiment.  Dragons almost never ate the same abstraction, so even the other dragontethers at Barry’s university had rarely, if ever, met a time-eating dragon.  Once, on a dare, Telastra had tried to flash-ferment grape juice and brewer’s yeast into wine - the resulting sludge had smelled so toxic that Barry had been forced to tell the RA that he’d been playing with his high school chemistry set.  They hadn’t tried that again.  

The evidence backlog at the CCPD was considerable, and it was several hours before Barry felt like he and Telastra had really begun to make a dent in it.  “Let’s take a break,” Barry said at around one in the afternoon, collapsing into a swivel chair.  “I need some lunch, and your hoard is probably piled high.”  

There is plenty of excess, Telastra said, her mental ‘voice’ taking on the slightly smug tone that it did when she was talking about the size of her personal energy stockpile.   I can share some tonight if you want it, she offered.   You have several books on your nightstand that you still have not finished.  I can help you speed-read through them.  

“I have trouble retaining stuff when you do that,” Barry sighed.  “I do need to decide what I’m making to take for dinner at Joe’s house, though - can you help me read the cookbooks?”

I can do that.   Telastra rested her head on Barry’s knee, and he smiled.  

They finished checking in the evidence with an hour to spare, leaving Barry plenty of time to make it to the particle accelerator launch.  

Naturally, he’d been late again.  He’d gotten off the bus just in time to see the doors of STAR Labs swinging shut - “No more standing room,” they’d told him - and he’d been forced to wait in the rain until one of the new cops, a detective named Eddie Thawne, had been able to come by and take him back to the station.

I wish I could have helped, Telastra sighed in Barry’s mind once they arrived at the police station; the passenger seat of the squad car had been far too small for her.  

“I know it doesn’t work like that,” Barry said, touching the dragon’s neck automatically.  “But thanks anyway.  We can watch the news in the lab though, so it’s not like we’ll miss the whole thing.”  

They’d only be missing Harrison Wells’ speech, after all.  Seriously, he had a time-hoarding dragon and he’d still managed to be late!  

He pulled the swivel chair over to the monitor, stepping over the puddle of water that had formed in the middle of the lab - not that it made much of a difference, he reflected with a grimace, since his shoes were soaked through anyway.  He switched on the screen, and the monitor immediately displayed the CCPN video feed, which was focused - as it had been all day - on coverage of the particle accelerator.  “I’m Linda Park,” said the reporter, “and I’m live outside STAR Labs despite the inclement weather, which is only going to get worse...”  

So they’ve switched on the accelerator? Telastra said, and Barry nodded.   The storm really is nasty - you wouldn’t be able to see anything even if you were watching from STAR Labs.  

Barry grinned.  “Ideally there wouldn’t be anything to see,” he said.  “The actual accelerator is underground - if we could see it working, there would be a big problem.”  

But I think there is a problem.  Why is there a klaxon blasting on the news?  

“What?”  Barry’s eyes widened, and he turned back to the broadcast.  There was something wrong with the accelerator - STAR Labs was being evacuated.  Barry thought about the crowd of people who had been packed inside, and reflected that it was a good thing he’d been late to the party after all.  

Naturally, at that precise moment, the power went out.  

Then, outside the window, the horizon was lit up by a column of gold light.  “Telastra, I think the particle accelerator just exploded,” said Barry numbly.  “Holy shit it just exploded.”

We need to get out of the lab, his dragon said.   There’s too many windows - let’s go back downstairs -

“You’re right, you’re right,” Barry muttered, backing away from the window as the expanding bubble of gold light rolled across the building.  “I just have to close the storm shutters - the skylight is letting rain in - ”

No, we need to go now! Telastra insisted, actually grabbing his shirtsleeve in her teeth and pulling on him.  Barry’s jaw dropped in astonishment.   I don’t like this!  

Barry drew in a deep breath to argue, and then felt the hair rise on the back of his neck, and on his head, and on his arms -

Barry, move! his dragon cried - and then a bolt of lightning shattered the skylight, arced down the metal chains, and slammed straight into Barry.    

Through the searing pain, Barry thought he saw a pair of panicked yellow eyes fixed directly on his own.