Anders stared at the back of his partner’s head, not fully comprehending what the dragon had just said. “You don’t… know how to fly?” he asked. Dumbfounded when Ghain continued silent, confirming his suspicion, the captain had no idea how to respond. “Did you hit your head when you landed?” Anders asked quizzically as he swung one leg over and slid down the dragon’s side to land on his feet with a solid thump. He walked around to stand in front of Ghain, sand shifting under his boots, and squinted a bit against the afternoon sun to get a good look at his face.

The dragon certainly didn’t look injured, but then, considering how durable his scales were, any sort of internal injury wouldn’t necessarily show on the surface. A dragon’s brain could rattle around in its skull just as easily as a human’s he supposed, though he hadn’t really heard of a dragon getting a brain injury before. “What’s your name?” Anders asked.

“What?” the dragon asked with a snort, finally looking at his partner again.

“I’m trying to figure out if you have brain trauma, just answer the question,” Anders said. He was no healer, but it didn’t hurt to try.

Ghain gave his head a brief shake, the draconic version of rolling his eyes, but replied. “Ghain.”

“And what’s my name?”

“Anders.”

“Okay, how long have we been bonded?”

Ghain sighed. “Fourteen years, if you’re to be believed.”

“I’m not the one that forgot how to fly,” Anders countered archly.

“You never knew how in the first place,” the dragon rumbled and his partner shrugged.

“Well I haven’t forgotten anything else either.”

Ghain turned his head to fix the man with one big, critical, yellow eye and asked, “How would you know if you had?”

Anders opened his mouth to answer, but stopped as he realized the dragon had a point. Flummoxed, he frowned thoughtfully, fingers raking absently through his crown of golden hair. “Alright, that’s fair, but you forgetting how to fly is the bigger issue, so lets table the rest for later,” he said and crossed his arms over his chest as he turned his attention back towards the water. Past the macabre barrier presented by the whale graveyard, the ocean twinkled under the afternoon sun with very little in the way of waves for as far as he could see.

Even here the air was suffocatingly still, the only sound that of their breathing and the gentle sigh of the water as it cast itself languidly upon the shore. It wasn’t natural, this place, wherever it was. The captain had studied geography just like every other young tyro hoping to one day become a rider, and possibly even more since then. There were no islands near Marilderland’s coast, so surely they must still be on the mainland… Curious, the man turned and looked back the way they’d come, and over the tops of the trees he spied the peak of a mountain. It wasn’t a large one, only just tall enough for its crown to be bare of any foliage, but it was the only easily spotted landmark from sea-level, so Anders decided that would be their destination for the time being.

Turning back to Ghain, the rider gave his partner a firm slap on the shoulder and in a tone more confident than he felt, declared, “We’ll head for that mountain. Maybe getting you higher up will jog the old memory, and if nothing else, it’ll give you something tall to jump off of to figure things out the fast way.”

Ghain shot him a doubtful look, but having no better plan, agreed and allowed Anders to mount again. They started off down the beach, walking parallel to the water and maintaining a wary distance from the gallery of bones in hopes of finding a less dense stretch of forest to pass through on their way to the mountain than what they had arrived in. Anders thought it was likely their best bet for finding fresh water, too. All the gear he’d had strapped to Ghain’s riding harness had luckily survived the fall, including his water flask, but the day was warm and that would only last so long, even rationed. It wasn’t any help to Ghain, either, though luckily for them he could go the better part of a week without water if he had to. After their hard flight to Portistown and the battle that followed, however, Anders had no doubt the dragon was plenty thirsty. Just because he could go a week without water didn’t mean it’d be a comfortable experience, after all.

Fortunately, their gamble paid off, and as the sun began its descent towards the horizon, Ghain’s keen nose caught the scent of fresh water and he picked up the pace, carrying them around an outcropping of stone onto a rougher stretch of beach where they soon spied a stream running into the ocean. The dragon immediately approached and thrust his muzzle into the clear flowing water, leaving Anders to dismount on his own.

Huffing in amusement, then captain gave his partner a slap on the shoulder then slid down to the ground and went a little upstream of the dragon to top off his water flask. The stream itself was crystal clear, which was always a good sign, though once he’d filled the container he decided to use a little purification magic on it, just to be safe. You never knew what might be going on upstream of your water source, after all, no matter how clean it looked.

Anders lifted his hand to sketch the same runes he had a thousand times before… but stopped as he suddenly came up blank. Standing frozen on the spot, the man could perfectly envision the runes he needed, but when it came time to channel his magic through their familiar lines, well, Ghain might as well have asked him to fly. He couldn’t for the life of him recall how to channel the force he could feel burning deep down inside of him at his core.

“Oh no,” he groaned and dropped his hand as he turned to look at Ghain. “I just realized what I’ve forgotten.”

“What is it?” Ghain asked, lifting his head from the surface of the water with a sharp look.

“Magic.”

“What, all of it?”

“No! I remember the runes I just… I can’t do it!”

Anders dropped to a crouch on the pebbled stream bank, then allowed himself to flop over backwards with a groan of frustration as he scrubbed his face with his hands. He tried again, attempting a simple fire starting spell, but came up with nothing; the same happened when he tried a levitation spell on a pebble. Even the spells stored in his ring failed, not because they were no longer there, but because Anders had somehow forgotten what it felt like to channel magic into them, a necessary skill for working any spell. It’d always come so easily to him in the past, as natural as breathing…

The captain sighed and looked over at Ghain again, still sprawled on his back and said, “It’s like my instinct for how to channel it is gone. I can’t even-” Anders made a sound of disgust then lifted a hand and regarded the black sapphire ring that glittered innocently on one finger— beautiful, but completely useless to him for the first time since the day he’d inherited it.

Ghain regarded him steadily from where he’d settled besides the water in a reclined position while his parter had attempted to reconnect with his magic. “Did you hit your head?” he asked.

Anders heaved another sigh and pushed back up into a seated position. “No, I don’t think so,” he said as he rubbed one hand absently over his hair. “I’m sure I’d still be feeling something that made me forget magic, helmet or no helmet.”

“Then I doubt I did, either,” the dragon replied thoughtfully, tail tapping irritably against the ground as he considered their position. “There must be something about this place,” he said, hackles rising fractionally as he cast his gaze up towards the mountain. “Everything has felt wrong since we arrived, and now this…”

Anders was inclined to agree. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said and got to his feet, brushing himself off as he did. “Though I can’t imagine what is going on around here. I’ve never heard of a dragon forgetting how to fly.”

“Or a human how to use magic,” said dragon added and the captain hummed in agreement. “Could it be a trap set by the Sunderish forces?” Ghain hazarded, though judging by his tone, he was skeptical of his own suggestion.

Anders shrugged. “I guess it could be, but it seems unlikely. Those bones look like they’ve been here for ages, and they’re definitely part of the weird in this place,” the man pointed out, and coming to a decision, marched right down towards them.

Ghain called out a warning and immediately heaved himself to his feet then followed after his partner. The human paid him no mind though, intent on his goal. They’d been keeping their distance from the water line the whole walk along the beach, though the number of whale skeletons had fluctuated the whole way. Sometimes there’d be a dozen or more within a few yards of one another, and others, a single pile of bones for a long stretch of empty sand. Here and now, there were two such skeletons within a stone’s throw of one another; the remains of vast creatures just as long as Ghain, half-buried in what was no doubt years worth of sand.

As Anders came upon the skull, he did not dare touch it, but he did confirm his suspicion that, judging by the pockmarks in the white bone, the remains were quite old. He also noticed that while the whale skeletons were certainly the most eye-catching, all around them on the sand, for as far as the eye could see, where the bones of other, lesser sea-dwelling creatures. There were the remains of great fish that would have made any fisherman proud, and pristine shells abandoned by the creatures that had once inhabited them as they crawled higher up the beach and died above the high-tide line.

“Come away from there,” Ghain called, having stopped well short of the waterline himself out of an abundance of caution. He shifted anxiously on his paws as he watched his partner and stretched his long neck out towards Anders to encourage him.

Using his greater height and superior eyesight, the dragon shifted on his paws and, picking up his partners mood, answered, “It looks like footprints,” then started off immediately towards them.

Anders broke into a jog to keep up with his significantly longer stride, then jumped up and caught the dragon’s harness with a practiced hand as they reached the edge of the stream and hung on so Ghain could carry him across to spare him a wetting. On the other side it quickly became apparent that they were footprints, two sets in fact; one dragon, one human. The dragon’s were distinctly smaller than Ghain’s and it looked as though they had simply strode up out of the water and onto the beach, then eventually continued along the stream bank towards the distant tree-line. Whatever clues to the direction they’d come from had been washed away by the tide, but Anders didn’t need more than that to guess who they might belong to.

“The Black Prince and his dragon?” the captain said with a frown, uncertainty and hope at war within his chest. On the one hand, they were the enemy and they’d all been doing their very best to kill one another just hours ago. On the other, considering they hadn’t simply flown away, it seemed a safe guess that they were affected by the same forgetfulness plaguing Anders and Ghain themselves.

Ghain rumbled his agreement and turned to regard the tree-line. “Traveling along the stream would be easier than cutting through the trees,” he observed, which was no doubt the same thought that had occurred their enemy. He turned his gaze back to his partner after a moment and added, “If we run into them—”

“Could be a blood-bath,” Anders finished, hand automatically going to the short sword all riders kept strapped to their thigh. It wasn’t a weapon that saw much use in mounted combat, more a weapon of last resort for self defense if a rider got separated from their dragon. The captain didn’t particularly relish the idea of having to use it. “Or,” he continued more hopefully, “maybe we could convince them to make a truce until we figure out what’s going on around here?”

His partner cut him a skeptical look.

“What? It could happen. I’ve been told I’m very charismatic, you know.”