Fireborne

Since the Revolution, being dragonborn has been a death sentence. All dragonriders, called Guardians, are lowborn, commoners, or former serfs in the new regime—“no longer the sons of dragonlords” (9). Though Lee is the son of a dragonlord, no one—not even the First Protector himself—knows or remembers this. Ever since the First Protector spared Leo’s life and placed him in an orphanage, he has taken on the name Lee and let the truth of his heritage be buried and forgotten.

Lee rides his dragon, Pallor, through the sky alongside his dragon rider friends, Annie, Crissa, and Cor. Of them, Lee has known Annie the longest, since their orphanage days. They are rehearsing for the opening ceremony for the tournament, in which eight Guardians will compete in the quarterfinals for the honor of Firstrider—the commander of the aerial fleet—and perhaps even recognition as the First Protector’s eventual successor. It will be the first time since the Revolution that Callipolis will name a Firstrider. Lee, Annie, Crissa, and Cor are four of the eight Guardians competing for Firstrider. Cor’s younger brother, Duck, will be competing as well along with Power—a fellow rider with patrician ancestry from the old regime who enjoys antagonizing their friend group.

Their patrician drillmaster, Goran, sets forth the bracket for the day’s matches. The pairs include Annie versus Darius, Cor versus Rock, Lee versus Crissa, and Power versus Duck. Afterward, he delivers letters to Annie and Lee. While Lee’s contains a handwritten “Good Luck” from Atreus himself, Annie’s contains a suggestion from the Ministry of Propaganda for Annie to reconsider becoming a rider of the Fourth Order. They want Annie to throw the match.

A flashback reveals Lee’s early days at Albans Orphanage, where he first met Annie nine years ago. He struggles to understand the language the peasant children speak, as it’s not the dragontongue of dragonborn. One day at the orphanage, he discovers two large children cornering a young girl—Annie. Lee threatens them with a kitchen knife, and they leave Annie alone.

In the present day, Annie rides her own dragon, Aela, before the Firstrider quarterfinals tournament. Though she still has nightmares of the dragonfire that killed her entire family, she cannot deny the beautiful connection she has to her own dragon. As they wait for the competition to begin, Duck asks Annie to come visit his family during the Midsummer break, and she agrees. Duck’s family, the Sutters, embrace him and Annie eagerly. They speak of the honor of becoming Firstrider and believe there might be a war soon with New Pythos. New Pythos is rumored to “harbor survivors from the Three Families that escaped the Palace Day massacres” (32).

The upper class believes that New Pythos’s military might is negligible, but the Ministry of Propaganda keeps the rumors alive amongst lower-class metals to inspire patriotism. The current class system in the new regime uses testing during a child’s last year of schooling to determine their placement in society; their class-metal placement is depicted by a person’s wristband. Gold entwined with silver is for the high-testing military class. Below them is the Bronze class reserved for skilled labor and further down the social hierarchy is the Iron section for unskilled labor.

The competition commences and Cor defeats Rock, followed by Lee who beats Crissa swiftly. Power cruelly plays with Duck, burning him the maximum number of times with his dragon’s ash breath before winning the match. Annie goes against the Ministry of Propaganda’s suggestion to spite those who underestimate or dismiss her because of her low status and shy nature. She defeats her opponent, Darius, in under two minutes with excellent flying maneuvers on her dragon. While Lee and Annie celebrate their victories afterward, they believe their paths are headed for an inevitable collision course later in the competition.

After the competition, Annie is greeted by the Mackys—the family from Holbin who took her in after her own family was executed by dragonfire. The family is no longer skin and bones as they had been during the Famine period she experienced with them. They tell her of how Holbin has grown in the past nine years and how well fed they’ve been since. Annie is also approached by an unnamed girl who is very curious about Lee and his origins. Annie tells her that Lee is a slum orphan like herself, despite the fact that she’s never believed Lee to be merely a poor orphan.

In another flashback from the orphanage, Lee and Annie slowly become friends. He learns how to speak her language—Callish—and how to hide his initial accent until he can blend in with the other orphaned children. He begins bringing her Callish newspapers to read aloud to him. They learn about Atreus’s post-revolutionary People’s Assembly where they decided the fate of the 32 dragon eggs that survived the Red Month. They put forth the concept of a merit-based dragonrider selection process in which people of any station could compete to become dragonriders called Guardians, tasked with carrying out justice instead of oppression and control. Another article reveals that some members of the Three Families—the Triarch that formerly ruled the old regime—survived yet went missing during the Red Month amongst other dragonborn and likely fled to New Pythos—a territory colonized generations ago by the Ha’Aurelians (a dragonless branch of half Aurelians). After hearing this news and reading the list of names—some of which he recognizes as his cousins, Julia and Ixion—Lee plans to leave the orphanage. Annie agrees to come with him.

In the present day, Lee and Cor travel to the Manufacturing District to make the rounds and ask both employers and employees about wages and work conditions. Luckily, this time they find no discrepancies between the employer and employee’s answers. In a following class with Professor Perkins, Lee summarizes an article on New Pythos he and his classmates read. The article suggests reassessing New Pythos as a threat because there isn’t a way to prove they don’t have dragons. However, a counterargument Perkins poses is that New Pythos has never had access to dragons, nor does the land contain any hot springs for dragon-hatching grounds. The author of the article suggests that the Three Families might have hidden eggs offshore and the dragonborn who escaped had this knowledge. Regardless of the theories, there is no way to prove New Pythos’s actions with the thick North Sea fog covering their territory.

After class, Annie convinces Lee and Duck to accompany her to the Lyceum Club—a club known for favoring patrician patrons over peasant-born. Inside, Power beckons Annie over and claims they will be competing against each other in the Firstrider semifinals. He calls her an ambitious serf, much to the amusement of his friends, but rather than fight back, Annie agrees and walks away. Later in the day, Annie goes through her classes and eventually, all Firstrider candidates are handed a list with additions to their class schedule, including Advanced Dragontongue Poetry; Weekly High Council meetings; Advanced Etiquette and Dance Lessons; and a private weekly class with the First Protector.

Dragontongue Poetry is taught by a former court tutor from before the Revolution named Richard Tyndale who recognizes Lee as Leo. After class, a patrician Gold student named Hanna Lund invites Annie to join her and her friends in the library for homework and she agrees. Meanwhile, Lee is asked to stay behind and speak with Tyndale. In private, Tyndale admits that he was in love with Leo’s oldest sister, Penelope, who was killed in the Revolution on Palace Day. Tyndale admits that he attempted to flee to New Pythos but was told to wait by people he believes Lee would like to meet. Tyndale asks if Leo would like to meet them.

During drills with their dragons, Lee and his classmates discover a fleet of dragons in the far distance that they don’t recognize as part of the Callipolan fleet. Annie gives everyone the order to retreat immediately when Lee hesitates.