The Sixth Dragon Rider

Part 20

"This was the first book I found down here, and it's been one of the most helpful," Aura said, tracing her fingers along the book's ancient cover, "But if we're looking for information about summoning powers this probably isn't the book."

Kasha and Salarah only nodded, eyes still wide as they stated around the room in wonder. Neither of them spoke for a minute, both focused on trying to absorb everything in the room. Kasha was the first to break out of her reverie, shaking herself out and setting a serious look on her face.

"Alright, you said that's the first book you found, but not the only one right? Let's start with you grabbing that book you mentioned with the account from a witch that practiced conjuring in it, and Salarah and I will look through the shelves for anything else that might be useful," Kasha said.

"Alright," Aura responded, nodding in agreement and turning towards the shelves.

Kasha shook Salarah and beckoned her towards the shelves before beginning her own search. Aura grabbed a small, dusty book that looked hand-bound and brought it back to the table. Only the sound of quietly flipping pages and books being pulled off shelves filled the room as all three girls diligently looked for answers.

"I found these books," Kasha said, placing a stack down on the table where Aura sat.

"And I found this," Salarah said, lugging over a massive book which she dropped on the table with and audible thump.

Aura coughed and waved the dust that came with the ancient books away from her face. When the dust had settled she looked over the findings placed before her.

"I don't know if we have much time left to spend in here today so let's just try and get started on a few of these books. I think our current goal should be to understand how people become conjurer's," Aura said.

"I agree," Kasha stated, "We need to know if Aura could even be a conjurer before we start doing all this research into how it works. I found this book called "The Art of Conjuring: No simple task", it kind of sounds like a guide to conjuring so I thought I'd start there."

"I think I'll start with my massive friend here," Salarah said, patting the book she'd drug over, which let off another cloud of dust.

"I think I'll just see if this witch lady has any more to say about conjuring for now," Aura said, gesturing to the small book that lay open in front of her.

Silence blanketed the room again as the girls began reading. A cloud of dust settled over the table as it was released from the yellowing pages of the books. The slight creaking of chairs and crackling of torches provided the only noise in the room. Nirvana left her perch on one of the bookshelves and fluttered over to Aura, where she began reading over her shoulder, her opal scales dancing in the torchlight.

"You know what I find really strange about this whole thing?" Nirvana whispered into Aura's mind.

"The whole thing?" Aura replied, unconsciously shivering at the feeling of the dragon's whisper blowing across her mind like a breeze.

"Well, yeah, but no. I mean about this conjuring thing specifically. Why would Cassandra choose somewhere like the void to hide the key to her diary. She clearly wanted someone to find it if she went to the trouble of writing that riddle and everything, and she clearly wanted it to be a specific person with the way she locked up her tower and hid the journal in it, but how could she know that this specific person, you I guess, would even possess the skill of conjuring. Skills are pretty random after all, there's no way to know what someone will get," Nirvana explained.

"Okay...but what are you getting at?" Aura asked, trying to multitask between reading and talking to the dragon.

"Well, I was thinking, what if conjuring isn't an inherited skill, like control over water or fire. You said a witch knew it, and witches don't have inherent skills, only dragon riders do," Nirvana continued.

"And..." Aura replied, starting to tone out Nirvana as she rambled on.

"So what if conjuring is something anyone can learn!" Nirvana finished triumphantly, right as Salarah called out, "I think I have something!"

Aura and Kasha both jerked their heads up from the table and turned towards Salarah. Aura quietly removed Nirvana from her perch on her shoulder and placed her on the table.

"You genius! You might be onto something there!" Aura replied to Nirvana, before turning her full attention to Salarah.

"What do you mean?" Kasha asked, her eyes locked on Salarah.

"Well, I was reading this book and it's talks about this "Age of Magic" time. Apparently there was a time when the world was full of magic and stuff and there was this big school where people would go to learn magic," Salarah explained.

"Kind of like Stonehaven," Aura mused.

"Kind of, but this was before dragons and people were connected by Cassandra. Instead of learning to be Dragon Riders like you do here, people were trained to be Sorcerers and Wizards and Witches and that type of thing," Salarah said.

"That's crazy, I've never heard of anything like that," Kasha said, "But how does it relate to conjuring?"

"Well, the next part of history, since this is a book recording all of our land's history, is called "The Rise of the Dragon Warriors". It seems like, from what I'm reading, that there was a time when dragon riders practiced magic beyond the elemental magic they can do now."

"Did you say "dragon warriors"?" Aura asked.

"Umm, yeah, why? Isn't that just like an old name for dragon riders?" Salarah asked, confused.

"I think I might have been to hasty in saying that that first book I found wouldn't be any help," Aura said, picking up the weathered tome.

A/N: Hey everyone, I know it's been a while but I'm going to start updating again. I don't know how regular updates will be, but they will be coming. I've decided to take this story in a different direction than I originally planned, so you might be seeing changes to chapters I already published and that's why. This chapter is 100% unedited so please tell me what you think.

Bye for now, Kat