Tessa’s POV:

  Aeria, Sadria, and Rhay walked down the short hallway and opened another door. This room was full of crates stacked on top of each other to form rows with narrow paths between them. The air was somewhat musty and stagnant.

  Puzzled, I looked around as we walked up and down a few rows. What kind of training session was this supposed to be? Just to see how well I sat on Aeria’s shoulder in strange places? I hadn’t seen another Kymari since we left the others, which I thought was odd considering how many had been in this building up until now.

  Aeria opened another door and stepped through it. A smell invaded my nostrils as a hiss issued from my throat. My claws extended, digging into her thick shoulder pad. My head whipped around as my nostrils flared at the faint smell. Danger.

  Something was in the room, and it wasn’t good. Like the last room, this one had a lot of crates. I wasn’t sure where the danger was!

  “Mom! Dad! There’s something bad in here!” My words echoed back at me.

  “Dirk! Tell Mom and Dad to warn Aeria!” This call also echoed. It wasn’t the first time Dirk had blocked the mindlink, but this was certainly the worst possible time. I hissed again, looking around anxiously.

  They couldn’t hear me. That meant they also wouldn’t be able to warn Aeria. I couldn’t just let her walk into danger!

  “Aeria! There’s danger here!” The words echoed through my mind.

  Nothing. She continued walking toward the crates as she had in the last room. Something told me that I should avoid such narrow spaces. Just as I started to panic, I realized Aeria didn’t seem to notice my fear. She always knew when something was wrong, and there was no way she could have missed my hisses. Could this be part of my training?

  Act natural? Isn’t that what Mom said? Natural for me, or natural for Aeria’s companions?

  I decided to try both paths. I half unfurled my wings with a warning screech. “Aeria! There’s something in this room!”

  Despite knowing—or at least suspecting—this was part of my training, I was starting to get desperate. The smell was almost chokingly strong—we had to leave, now!

  I keened a warning that went unnoticed and put more force behind my words. “Aeria! There’s danger!”

  I barely registered that my last call had lacked an echo as a shiny black head emerged from between two crates right above us. A flare of alarm jolted through me as I realized it was the danger I’d been smelling.

  Without thinking, I shrieked and launched at the creature’s nose. My claws dug into the black scales by its nostrils before my feet pushed me to a safer distance. The nose rapidly retreated into the shadows with a chilling silence. Aeria reached up to catch me.

  Cradling me in her arms, she jogged away from the creature’s hiding spot. “Good job!”

  We quickly escaped into another room and closed the door behind us. I exhaled in relief before tensing. There was another smell here, and it wasn’t much better than what we had just escaped. With a growl, I clambered to my feet, my claws digging into her leather glove.

  I tried warning Aeria again. “There is something bad in this room too.” There was no echo, but Aeria didn’t react to my voice. “Aeria? Can you hear me? There’s danger.”

  She shifted me onto her shoulder without replying. The other two Kymari kept close, and it dawned on me that she couldn’t reply with them nearby. This was probably part of my training too. The inability to communicate was frustrating.

  A growl left my throat as I scanned the room. The grating sound was quite different from the playful version that she had heard many times before. It was my best way of warning her at the moment.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  She walked quickly and warily through more rows of crates. I kept glancing around in case the new danger tried to sneak up on us. I quickly realized that it was hard to watch for something if you didn’t know what you were looking for.

  With a faint huff, I concentrated on the Blood Memories. Between watching for danger and the smell distracting me, it was hard to concentrate long enough to find the information I was looking for.

  Crawler. There was some sort of mutant spider in this room. It wasn’t that big, but its bite would send Aeria to the hospital. I searched harder; the creature in the last room had been a sicora. That was my best guess, at any rate. The Memories told me that it should have attacked, not run away. Sicora were very dangerous.

  My tail lashed as the scent got stronger, and I was relieved to see another door ahead of us. Thankfully, we left the room without seeing the crawler. The door led to an empty hallway.

  I flinched when Mom’s voice appeared in my head. “Good job. You did well. Sorry we didn’t tell you before, but you wouldn’t have reacted realistically if you’d known. Please put your mind shield up. It’s Dirk’s turn now. We can talk later.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked this kind of training. Did unexpected things happen on real patrols? I raised my mind shield, wondering how well Dirk would do. He hated surprises.

  The door ahead of us opened, revealing Taureen and the others as we came from a different direction. Aeria lifted her hand to me, and I climbed on. She passed me to Taureen, and I jumped onto his leather gauntlet as he took my leash.

  Dirk stared at me as he was passed to Aeria, probably trying to mindlink me with questions. With my brother on her shoulder, Aeria and her two companions walked through the door we had originally gone through.

  Mom was lying on Taureen’s right shoulder pad while Dad sat on his left one. Neither one looked concerned. Did they know what was in those rooms? Somehow, I suspected that they did. Aeria hadn’t been scared either, almost like she had expected them to be there.

  I climbed up Taureen’s shirt so I could sit near Mom. I couldn’t get the smell of those two creatures out of my mind. She nuzzled me reassuringly, but even with her beside me, my eyes kept drifting back to the two doors.

  “The little scarlet is still on edge,” one of the Kymari commented.

  Taureen glanced at me. “I’m not too surprised. Tasha doesn’t calm down until she either sees them dead or hasn’t been able to smell them for a while.”

  Tkael murmured, “It was a bit of a challenge to seal the ventilation system so no trace of the scent could get out here. We had to install a true airlock door, but it will be useful in future training sessions.”

  “It won’t take Aeria long to go through the rooms,” Soranto said as he watched the door. “I’m curious to hear if they reacted differently.”

  Silence fell as we waited. With my mind shields up, I wouldn’t know if Dirk tried to call me. I hoped that he didn’t get as scared as I did. Finally, the door opened, and Aeria came through with Dirk under her long black hair, chittering in agitation.

  “How did it go?” Taureen inquired as he walked over.

  Aeria rubbed Dirk’s head in an attempt to soothe him. “Even if someone had never seen a fire lizard, they would have known something was wrong. Both of them picked up the sicora’s scent the moment we walked through the door and reacted quite strongly. Tessa actually managed to scratch its nose. She saw it before I did.”

  Dad hopped from Taureen’s shoulder to Aeria’s and bumped his head against Dirk’s. From how my brother looked at him, I was pretty sure that they were mindspeaking.

  Mom chirped aloud, “You can lower your mind shields now.”

  “—was huge! It would have swallowed me in one bite! I can’t fly well enough to fight something like that, and Aeria wouldn’t turn back regardless of how much I hissed and snarled!” Dirk’s chittering increased.

  Dad hummed reassuringly. “You don’t have to fight it. That’s why a handler is accompanied by at least two fighters. On a real patrol, a handler and the guards will react to your warnings, not ignore you like Aeria just did.”

  “How did they do in the room with the crawler?” Tkael asked.

  “I didn’t see it, but both of them knew something was around. They were getting pretty worked up, so we didn’t go through all of the rows.”

  He nodded, unsurprised. “We always suspected their reaction was instinctive, and this confirms it.”

  Taureen looked around. “I think that is enough for today.”

  Everyone nodded and walked back the way we had originally come.

  “Was the sicora real?” I asked Mom, wondering if they were just going to leave the dangerous thing in there.

  “They used the skin from a dead one to leave scent trails. They mounted the hide on a robot to make it move back and forth if someone got too close. The crawler was one they killed on a ship a few days ago.”

  “Why would they let something like that on board?”

  “It snuck on. That’s why the dragonets check the spaceships. To keep sicora and crawlers off this planet. Dragonets help their handlers find them, and then the fighters kill them.”

  I didn’t like the sicora or its terrible smell, but I liked the thought of them sneaking into the city even less. I was also very surprised that I was finally able to mindlink Aeria. It gave me a lot to think about on the way home.