The cloudless afternoon sky was an eye-stinging shade of blue overhead but the view of the ground below was just as bad when Nysid cast his eyes in its direction. Even from his dragon’s back three hundred feet in the air, golden sand stretched as far as the prince could see, reflecting the sunlight back up at him with a harshness that made Nysid glad for the tinted glass that covered his helmet’s eye wells.

The heat that accompanied that brightness, at least, was bearable, though that was only thanks to their forward momentum and the minor cooling spell set into the hardened leather armor Nysid wore.

Beneath him, his dragon turned, long since familiar with the patrol route they were taking despite how infrequently they actually went on patrol. As captain of Rodshyom’s eleventh dragon wing, Nysid’s day-to-day duties were generally more wrapped up in garrison administration, the logistics of maintaining the wing, and personnel issues. He liked to make sure he got out on patrol occasionally, however, if only to take his fair turn at what was regarded as one of the more boring duties by the riders under his command.

Then again, compared to sitting behind a desk, patrol duty was practically a holiday to Nysid, so maybe his intentions weren’t entirely noble.

Not that his lieutenants made it easy for him to actually get on the duty roster. If most captains had volunteered to take patrols on top of their usual duties the way Nysid did, they would likely be lauded by their men, but as a prince the man found his movements hindered more often than not. For all he wasn’t heir to the kingdom, people had a habit of, if not treating him like glass, then at least as something to be protected─ despite ostensibly being the one who should be doing the protecting.

It was a frustrating state of affairs, but Nysid had eventually worn his lieutenants down to a point they would only rarely object to his going out. The sudden increase in orders coming directly from the King, Nysid’s uncle, had helped speed up the change─ though not in a way the prince appreciated.

Pushing aside the bitter thought, Nysid cast his gaze out across his dragon’s wing to note his companions where they trailed him on either flank, riding swift and easy between the powerful updrafts generated by the hot sand below. Both dragons were pale─ one the same shade as the desert sand below while the other was a cream that bordered on white, both in sharp contrast to Nysid’s own dragon.

Black as a shadow on a moonless night, Ephinea stood out from her kin in the Malyara dragon clan of Rodshyom, though she was a thing of beauty to anyone that lay an eye on her. At just over thirty feet in length, Ephinea was average size for her kind, and like most of her breed, had a slim build with narrow wings built for speed and maneuverability. Twin black horns swept back from the temples of her narrow skull and hard, sharp spines ran the length of her neck and back, though as was customary when a dragon found a human partner, a few had been sanded down to allow for Nysid’s riding gear.

“Nysid,” Ephinea called, drawing her partner from his woolgathering as she cocked her head to regard him with one large, pale blue eye. “There’s something strange on the horizon.”

Immediately snapping to attention, the prince narrowed his eyes behind his helmet but saw nothing more than a vague smudge in the distance. Human eyes simply couldn’t match a dragon’s when it came to that sort of thing. “We were expecting a supply caravan today,” he remarked, then frowned and added, “We’re a little far west for their usual route, though.”

Without needing to be told, Ephinea adjusted course and Nysid brushed his fingertips over the small red gem set into the collar of his armor to activate a comm-spell. “Some sort of disturbance on the horizon, re-routing to investigate,” he informed his companions and received confirmation as they followed suit.

Ephinea angled her black wings and picked up speed, cutting effortlessly through the hot desert air until they drew close enough to the cloud of dust that Nysid could confirm his suspicions. Its source was indeed the caravan─ though it was not alone.

“Sand wraiths,” Ephinea growled deep in the barrel of her chest, hackles rising to reveal her sharp, white teeth.

“So far north?” Nysid murmured to himself, eyes narrowed in disapproval at the swarm of creatures circling the caravan below.

Nightmare spawn of a desert spider and a tailless scorpion writ large, sand wraiths had central bodies nearly four feet in length and eight barbed legs, two of which were thicker than the rest and ended in a ghastly set of pincers. They traveled in groups anywhere from two to a dozen depending on the time of year and were every caravan’s greatest fear. Sheep, cattle, horses, men… nothing was safe from the creatures’ voracious appetites.

Once upon a time, it would have been unheard of to find them outside the deepest parts of Rodshyom’s southern desert, but recent droughts had turned the once mighty river that had acted as a natural barrier for the creatures to little more than mud. Finding them in this particular stretch of desert was a new and worrying development that made the prince’s brow furrow beneath his helmet.

Setting his concern aside for the moment, Nysid activated his comm-spell again. “Flanking maneuver. You two take the left, I’ll take right. Flame only if you can avoid the caravan,” he said after taking a moment to assess the situation playing out below.

The caravan had come to a full stop when the rangy oxen pulling the carts broke rank and began bucking in their yokes when the sand wraiths attacked. Their masters were doing their best to fend the creatures off, but it was clear they were unprepared for such an assault; unsurprising when one considered that bandits, rather than monsters, were a far more likely problem for a caravan to come across in this area.

A few brief bursts of fire signaled at least some of the caravaners had remembered the old stories, though Nysid could tell at a glance it wouldn’t be enough.

“Cut low and close, keep a narrow stream,” Nysid told Ephinea then drew his bow from its sheath behind him and knocked an arrow from the specially constructed quiver by his knee.

“It’s been some time since we last did pest control, but I still remember how it’s done,” Ephinea replied, speeding up as she angled her wings and brought them in towards the caravan at a pace that made the wind whistle.

A cheer went up from the caravan at the dragons’ approach and Nysid took a breath in time with Ephinea, her ribs expanding beneath him as he sat up and pulled his bow back to full draw. They both loosed on the exhale, his arrow striking a sand wraith scaling the side of a cart, piercing it clean through and pinning it in place while Ephinea’s flame cut a cleansing swath through the crowd of massive insects still on the approach. Nysid knocked another arrow and sighted down its length on a second sand wraith, years of practice and deeply ingrained muscle memory letting him adjust for Ephinea’s speed and the movement of her wings automatically before loosing again to strike his target dead center.

Nysid slayed a third insect before his dragon broke away to come about for another pass and he took a moment to check on his riders. Between them they had managed to shoot as many sand wraiths as the prince had on his own, though their dragons had taken out a greater number of them with their flame and were now sweeping over the last of them. The few still-surviving beasts began to flee but Nysid gave his companions the order to pursue in hopes of wiping the infestation out entirely before they could settle in and begin to reproduce so far from their home territory.

They had enough problems without adding sand wraiths to the mix. The things had no natural predators in this part of the country outside of dragons, which would make it much harder to keep them in check if they were able to set down roots in a new ecosystem.

“Shall we give chase as well?” Ephinea suggested.

“No,” Nysid replied and turned his attention to the caravan once more. “Take us in, I want to speak to their leader.”