The world was filled with light and bright colors, yet its intensity didn't hurt her eyes. Celia looked into the sky to see a second, brighter moon in the sky among the stars and the crescent moon.

"Is that the sun? A brighter, permanent moon?" Celia spoke to herself, then quickly realized she was laying on her back in the snow. "How long have I been out?" She became nervous as Verbena didn't respond, as it felt like her mental search was vanishing into an endless void. "Where am I? This isn't Town. How did I get outside?" She looked up to the sky and once again saw the stars, moon, and sun, then stood and brushed the snow clinging to her clothes. After looking around at the snow-covered ground, she realized she didn't recognize the landscape. Hundreds of icy mountains surrounded the horizon.

While the town of Rien's mountain stood alone, while this peak was surrounded by others of various shapes and sizes. All of them were coated from peak to base in massive amounts of snow, just like how every piece of exposed land was coated in snow.

Suddenly, she heard the near silent flapping of feathered wings above her. Celia looked up and watched two massive furred dragons land on the nearby peak. They were Ari and Terran, the first dragons, ancestors of all dragons. Even massive Valiant was half of their size. Their eyes were a striking gold and stood as vibrant pools of color against the stark white of their ice-coated fur. Their powerful muscles and perfectly proportioned bodies were things of legend.

One of the dragons carried a rider on its back, and they leaped off of the dragon the person had been previously riding. "Jude. Stop this." a masculine and strong voice rang out from under the rider's hood. His voice rang with authority, and his golden coat was blazed with the five bars and two stars: the mark of an imaginary and unobtainable rank of Master Guild Master. He outranked everyone, even Guild Master Orthos. Despite not being too close to Celia, the female human could feel his aura of strength and light as it resonated through the air and through Celia's being.

Celia suddenly recognized what was happening around her: this was the time the sun disappeared. She had learned about it in her classes and with the lack of descriptive details, the characters and settings were exactly as she imagined it. This event was the reason the dragon academy even existed and without it, she may not even have Verbena as her friend. The rider, Levi, was revered as the first one to befriend a dragon, then he proceeded to befriend a second. After the sun was stolen, he started the guild in order to train new riders in hopes of one night returning light to the world.

Celia suddenly noticed a short, hunched man wearing a dark cloak with a bone pinning the hood shut at the base. He was standing on the very peak of the mountain, which also seemed to be the highest point Celia could see. "No!" He shouted and raised a hand as if he was grabbing the sun as it descended unnaturally fast towards the horizon. "This power will be mine!" He cackled like a witch and began to chant strange unintelligible words.

As Jude chanted, massive dark, snow-laden clouds formed and swirled ominously above them as an eerie feeling rushed over Celia and permeated the air itself. Instead of simply disappearing under the horizon, the light flew into Jude's hand as if the rays of light were drawn away from the horizon as if he was holding a light magnet. As the light reached his hand, it dulled and lost illumination.

Seeing no other option, Levi lunged at Jude in an attempt to grab the glowing ball of silver-blue light that grew larger at every passing moment, but all he did was break the containment of the light that spread and died out in random places across the once powerful and sunlit land known as Roahla.

"You fool!" Jude yelled in a stereotypical 'I've been foiled' whiney villain voice, "You ruined my plans! Now I'll never control the light of the sun!" Jude continued to attempt to strangle Levi, but swift intervention by one of the dragons swiftly ended the conflict. When faced with dragons as large as Ari and Terran, there was nothing that could stop them from doing whatever they wanted.

Although the historical accounts never mentioned Jude's death on the mountain, in Celia's fantasy, when the two men separated from the conflict, Jude theatrically slipped off of the clifflike peak and disappeared into the snow below and screamed as he fell. The scream became quieter and quieter as he fell until it faded away completely, leaving only the silence of nature only but the gentle breathing of the still-living beings still on the snow-capped mountain.

Celia edged to the edge and looked down, but the snow at the base of the cliff was oddly undisturbed and clean. There was no way tell that someone, especially the stealer of the sun, had just fallen to their death: no markings, imprints, or even any clues to his existence. It was as if Jude was only a figment of the imagination.

Suddenly, the snow beneath her feet began to shift and move to the edge, and while Celia attempted to back away, the action was in vain. Levi and his two dragons didn't react to her and acted as if she was an invisible ghost, so they made no move to catch her. The snow dragged her off the edge, but it felt more like she was on a bumpy slide than a free fall. Celia screamed and flailed her arms in panic as she slid down the slope and towards what she believed to be her doom. As she neared the bottom, she became so overwhelmed with fear that her body froze so she could no longer scream. Then, she slid the end off the rocky slide and fell into the snow.

~~~

To her groggy surprise, Celia woke up in her bed with a jump, then was immediately tackled by a worried green mass of fur. She felt a bit weak, but her strange and groggy feelings were beginning to fade away and she could think clearly again.

'You're okay!' Verbena licks the human's face. 'I was so worried.' She rubs her head against Celia's chin.

"Wha—what happened?" Celia rubbed her head with one hand and her eyes with the other. Her eyes widened as she finally regained enough mental processing power to recognize the previously glowing sphere was no longer in her hands. "The sphere!" She frantically searched around for the object.

Seeing her distress, Verbena used a paw to pick up the sphere from where it had become buried as Celia shifted in her bed.

Upon seeing the orb, the human sighed in relief and gratefully took it from Verbena's paw. "Thank you for getting it." She stroked Verbena's head again. "Now how did I get here?" She looked to the dragonet for answers.

'Oo! I did that!' Verbena said in excitement, then continued before Celia could utter a syllable in response. 'You tried to breathe water, which you can't, so you went to sleep suddenly, which was scary, but I bravely saved you and the ball thingie and carried you here!'

Verbena bounced a few times and spun in a circle before she shoved her head into Celia's face and continued her story in an excited tone. 'I was so worried about you! You could have died! I was worried that you were dead!' She covered Celia's face in worried, slobbery lick kisses.

"Oh thank you for bringing me back here," Celia wrapped her arms around the dragonet's head in a hug. "Thank you, Verbena, you are a real friend. I am so glad to have you. Thank you."

Verbena purred in response, then became even more relaxed as Celia scratched behind her ears and rubbed the wet, gooey dragon slobber off of her face and onto Verbena's clean fur.

At a sudden rasping sound against the rock outside, Celia flinched and looked towards the curtain covering the entrance. After a brief moment, she stood, waved off the psychedelic patterns of a head rush from the sudden movement, placed the sphere into her bed, then approached the entrance. "Come in."

A woman in a tan ejon coat pushed the curtain aside and entered. Though her coat was similar to that of a riders cloak, it was different. Since it didn't need to protect the person from the wind shear associated with riding a dragon, her coat was thinner and wasn't as long as a rider's cloak. "I'm sorry to wake you up, but your presence and your dragon's presence are required for a harness fitting." She looked between Celia and Verbena. "I apologize if I woke you, but you need to do the fitting now so you won't miss training when it starts in a few hours."

Celia nodded in understanding, then turned towards her dragonet and called her. "Verbena, let's go."

The dragonet perked up, then rushed over to her rider's side, excited. 'Where are we going?' She barked.

"We're just going to get your harness fitted so I have something other than your fur to hang on to when I'm on your back," Celia explained. "It will also make climbing onto your back faster."

'Ooooohhhh that makes sense.' Verbena smiles and looked excited.

"Follow me." The woman adjusted her sleeve where it had folded slightly, revealing not the mark of a rider, but the square shaped mark of the Cloth Guild. Though she was not a rider, After she fixed her sleeve, she exited the room with the expectations that Celia and Verbena would follow, which they do.

After walking up to the higher levels of the mountain, they reach the area designated to the Cloth Guild, which consisted of a few different cavities with different stations for the multiple specialties within the Cloth Guild: weavers, clothing designers, tailors, harness makers, and tanners.

The woman silently led Celia and her dragonet to the harness shop then told them to enter. "Here is where you need to go." After speaking, she turned and left the entrance to the harness shop and entered the tailor's cave, probably to work or be sent on a different task.

Based upon the fact that she had been sent on a retrieval mission, Celia assumed she was not to the second level in her training. Typically those in the unranked position of the first year or those in their second year were sent on menial jobs.

Celia was unsure what exactly the titles of the ranks were in the Cloth Guild, as even though she had studied all the ranks in all the guilds, she had forgotten the names of each rank outside of the Dragon Guild. Though important for some of the tests, the other guilds were not as important on the Potential Test.

The harness shop was full of straps of elastic material, metal buckles, and spools of thread decorated the room alongside complete harnesses that hung from large hooks embedded in the wall.

"Welcome!" A man approached them with a clipboard in his hand and a high-rank mark sown into his coat sleeve. He glanced at his clipboard. "Verbena and Celia?" He glanced back up to the two.

"That's us." Celia nodded in response.

'Who is he?' Verbena huffed as she studied the man that oddly smelled like multiple different dragons.

"I'm Faction Master Jak Leei of the Harness Makers." He introduced himself, then set his pondering gaze to Verbena. "I didn't realize she was so much smaller than normal." He frowned. "I wish they would let us into the cave early to get measurements. It would make my job easier." He grabbed a long knitted measuring rope with a knot every hand and a double knot every arm.

"If they're so worried about them bonding to us before the Choosing, we could work when they were asleep, problem solved." He threw one end of the rope over Verbena's neck and measured the thickness of her neck at the base, then recorded the dimensions on his clipboard.

Verbena sniffed Faction Master Jak as the man slid the rope across her fur. She shook herself like an animal to reposition the fur Faction Master Jak had disturbed with his rope and snorted, 'I better get a treat or something else special.' she snorted. 'He has treats.... somewhere.'

She snaked her neck to look at the Faction Master as he wrapped the rope around the base of her tail and snorted in slight discomfort. 'What does he think I am? Prey? Why is he sizing me up like this?' She shakes the rope off the second she felt it being dragged across her fur. 'I don't like it.' She sat down with a pout.

Faction Master Jak rolled his eyes and recorded the results from the rope, then took a few more of Verbena's measurements with her sitting down. "She's a lot smaller and thinner than the other dragons." He stated. "I'm going to have to make a new harness from scratch," he took a few more notes on his clipboard, "but the good news is I can just add holes to preexisting straps. Since you can't go to your first day of training without a harness, you'll have to wait here while I work." He grabbed a few straps from the hooks and took them to his workstation. "It won't be long," He promised, "I should be done by the next chime." He began to work.

'Chime? What chime?' Verbena pouted and laid down with a snort.

"I'll explain the chimes to you later." She sat down on the ground next to her dragonet and stroked her head.

The Chimes were how time was kept underground since the moon was a bit unpredictable in how long it remained in the sky per night. A massive contraption called the Chime dictated time underground. Celia had no idea how the machine worked, but she knew it was cared for by the Metal Guild. It ticked constantly, and every so often at even intervals, it emitted a deep ring of a bell. The sound traveled through old pipes covered in moss so that it was distributed throughout most of the tunnels, though it didn't quite reach the deepest parts of the mountain. There weren't any chimes during the day, so the last and first chimes of the night were doubled chimes to help people keep a stable circadian rhythm.

Or at least, it worked for most people, but Celia had a bad habit of sleeping through the chimes. Because of her bad habits, there were times where she had been late to class. For example, her most recent trip where she and Verbena found the sphere after the Choosing feast. Because she stayed up late into the day to have an adventure, she slept late into the night.

After Verbena woke her Celia up, they spent the time exploring the deepest portions of the mountain. Eventually, Verbena carried Celia back to their room, but Celia still didn't wake up with the chime. She did wake up soon after it, but not with it.

A deep reverberating metal dong echoed through the room and snapped out of her bored thoughts. "How long have I been lost in thought?" She whispered to herself as she looked around the room, then focused on Faction Master Jak and the other harness makers of varying ranked worked on various projects.

After sewing the final straps together, the Faction Master approached Verbena. "All right dragon, stand." He ordered.

Verbena raised her head and looked at him with an unamused expression of disdain. 'You're not my parent.' She snorted and then proceeded to pretend to ignore the man, much to his dislike.

Frustrated, Faction Master Jak looked to Celia. "Please make her stand. I'll even give her a treat when I'm done if she's good."

'Treat?' Verbena blinked in surprise and became extremely interested in the harness maker. 'Food?'

"Please stand up Verbena," Celia patted Verbena's shoulders in an assuring way. "If you do and do not resist while your harness is fitted, he'll give you some of the food you're smelling."

'Okay!' Verbena barked and jumped to her feet.

"Thank you," the Faction Master nodded and threw the straps over the dragonet's back, then reached under Verbena and pulled them back to where they buckled on her side. "I left plenty of growing room in the straps." He told Celia as he worked, then backed away once he was done. "There you go." He pulled a brownish red biscuit from his pocket. "Here's your dragon treat, now hurry to class."

As Verbena practically inhaled the gift, Celia slung herself onto the dragonet's back and positioned her hands and feet into her proper places. "Thank you!" Celia waved, then pressed forward on the harness to urge the dragonet foreword as she gave a verbal command. "Let's go Verbena!"

'All right!' She bounded out of the room.

Author Notes:

Happy Friday! Don't forget to vote if you liked this part, and feel free to ask questions!