Yesteryear Fiction

Fourth Trial Of A Dragon Knight
By Robert William Shmigelsky


Stretching from one end of the horizon to the other, a long row of ocean-blue typhoons swirled up and pierced the heavens, the ominous gray clouds hanging above. Along their path of destruction, a vast blue ocean, stretched to infinity by the arcane, shimmered with lighter shades of blue like a large melted sapphire as the typhoons swished towards the unseen gray shores they encircled.

Holding the azure blue hilt of a sword without a blade, the dragon knight apprentice flew from high in the skies towards the closest typhoon, which grew steadily larger in his eyes as he drew closer.

The Pegasus wings attached to his pair of dragon boots flapping in the air, he neared the typhoon’s prevailing winds drawing everything within their reach into it.

Undaunted, the apprentice pierced the thin white boundary marking the typhoon’s reach.

The wind tugging at him, reaching his skin beneath his armor, he combated the sheer pull of the typhoon. Although his mithril armor was as light as a feather, his steeled soulshard emitting unseen light underneath it hardened his resolve and propelled him on.

He rode in on an angle, not wanting to be pulled in too quickly. Feeling the brush of the wind against his face and in his eyes, he went up and around the typhoon, coming closer with each pass. After a dozen laps or so, he finally reached the typhoon itself. Here, the pull was at its strongest, but the apprentice was of the dragon lineage: the wind was his kin.

He flew over the mouth of the typhoon then plunged down into it and surfed along its spiraling inside wall towards the bottom, counterclockwise against the flow of the wind.

No force above or below that could stop him, he rode the wind current and made it look effortless.

Reaching the current’s end, the apprentice leapt up into the windless entrails and his blue sabatons landed above the stilled surface of the Endless Sea.

His dragon boots making him appear he was standing on water, the soon-to-be dragon knight looked up before him and saw, at the opposite end of the pool at the bottom of the typhoon, the source of the typhoon.

Sensing an intruder, the wind elemental threw up its arm-banded hands and leveled them before it. A great gust of wind hurled towards the apprentice, but he lithely dodged it and leapt out of the way.

Swooshing left and right and gliding closer, the handle of his hilt gripped tightly in his gauntlet, the apprentice reached the elemental and thrust the end of the hilt into the element’s chest.

It sucked into it the wind the elemental was made of. When the apprentice pulled back, the elemental was no more and in its place a long and lustrous streak of green wind spiraled atop the apprentice’s pristine new scimitar.

The typhoon no more, his eyes following it, the apprentice swung his sword upwards, held it above him and admired it in plain view.

The wind-blade crackled with the power of the fiercest storm imaginable: a power he now held in his hand. With a mere command, followed by the swing of his arm when his hand clutched tightly the scimitar’s hilt, he could unleash it and cause those that would dare to stand in his way – to tremble.

The dragon knight apprentice continued to admire his new sword, knowing he had successfully passed the fourth trial in him becoming a knight.


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Robert, a residential care aide, is unapologetic in his pursuit of excellent high fantasy. Robert has been writing fantasy for himself in his spare time for the last seven years, but has only recently begun writing for others. Besides reading and writing, some of his hobbies include computers and medieval and ancient history. He has a dry sense of humor, which he blames his stepfather for. Also, he has a habit of making history jokes no one but he understands.