She stood and moved to the door, he followed as she led them down the side of the stone cottage to its rear, until they were standing at the cliff’s edge. The peak of the Underlight Mountain fell away sharply into formidable slabs of crystal, dropping all the way to the wild ocean below. One could see the craggy outcrop rising up on the other side, the sheer faces of amethyst shimmered as light reflected off faceted surfaces and became caught in occlusions, breaking into shards of infinite refractions deep within its vast crystalline structure. Buried far within the amethyst, in the very heart of the mountain itself, were the vast glowing caves of marcry crystals.
Magda pointed toward the horizon, towards the moving, fractured aurora. A dark crack seemed to have formed vertically from the point the ocean met the sky and the light itself appeared to be threaded with a dark matter.
“It has grown since you first came. Somehow it seems connected to other things I have been sensing”. She trailed off again.
“Perhaps” said the dragon rider, but he had his own interpretations and suspicions and those he kept to himself, for now at least. He wanted to know more about these ‘travelers’, visitations and the visions, especially the entity she had been sensing recently. His dragon had seen something coalescing around her, if his suspicions were correct, he wasn’t entirely sure what that meant for the world. He knew it may have something to do with the dark fracturing, although he didn’t need her to watch its progress for him, he could do that perfectly well himself. He just needed to keep a watchful eye on how things were unfolding.
“If you don’t mind, I must get going within the hour if I am to reach the next town by nightfall” she said turning from the cliff edge.
“We ride by dragon. We will set off in the morning, it will only take us a day's flight. And it’s no bother, I have something to attend in that region”. Although he also had other reasons for extending the offer.
“Very well” she said. “We fly tomorrow morning”.
“Come it is time for you to greet Orion” said the rider turning from the cliff.
They made their way to the mountain pasture laying at the front of the cottage. Glimmering against the green field, its eldritch beauty uncanny in the daylight, was the dragon, Orion. Sleek and pearlescent, the frontal plane of its face like an arrowhead sweeping up into horned ridges over its unseeing moonstone eyes. A wraith.
“Orion, kin of Samson”, she announced, inclining her head in the customary gesture of respect. The creature blinked slowly and lowered its head also.
***
“So, Orion is a wraith” she said as they sat again at the oak table with more tea and brandy. Wraiths were rare, born blind, but with the gift of ‘dragon-sight’. Those dragons saw through the eyes of their riders and their riders saw into the shadow world with their dragon’s sight. Wraiths and their riders were considered unnatural by many and the target of superstitions, although they were accepted into the consortium of dragons and their riders.
“Yes, it is so.” Said the rider
“Orion? What does the name mean?”
“He is named after a constellation the inhabitants of another universe look upon. He is of another world and senses things that cross over into ours, much as you do”.