At the cordons, humans stood with large nets—the kind that they used to catch insects for cooking—and dragon riders flew in the sky. When the ice-hole tree seeds flew closer, their squad leaders gave an order—and they acted.
The nets were the most effective way of catching many seeds at once, so humans got the highest count of caught seeds. But dragon riders were also vital—their squads caught the trees that flew too high for humans to reach, or just slipped past the nets.
I saw a black dragon snap its jaws over a flying seed—the beast thought it might be tasty—and feared for a moment that the dragon might freeze.
But to my relief, in its thoughts I heard only a slight surprise at how cold the seed was, and even that passed quickly.
In other parts of the cordon, I saw that the nets used to catch seeds became covered in rime, but only after catching a few hundred seeds. An individual seed's chilling aura was too weak to deal any harm.
Which was just wonderful!
