VIII-2
1085 Words
Flames. Burning light. Warmth that made his scales burn like a thousand suns.
He was striding across a volcanic field. The ground smoldered beneath him; the sky, orange and smoky, glowed as a fan of lava shot through it. Beyond, the outline of a jagged mountain range lay floating in the smoke.
His mother was by his side. Black and slender, with the grace of a big cat. She climbed over the rocks as if she were gliding over them. How her scales glistened!
His pain was gone. Looking down at his body, he beheld the muscular frame of his youth. He must have been a thousand years old, maybe more.
He blinked both of his eyes and they responded.
He could’ve screamed with joy!
But his mother’s face was grim.
He knew her face. He knew his mother as well as he knew scripture. He could read her by the slightest wrinkle in her scales, the fiery glimmer in her emerald-green eyes.
There was no mistaking it.
She was furious.
This memory he recognized.
Had he gone back so far, back to the time before he was lord, back to the time before his parents were lords?
He was watching the memory with his own eyes. He was participating in it. All the thoughts going through his head exactly as they had done that day, mixed with his current thoughts.
Confidence surged through him. How it had been to be hungry…hungry for blood. Hungry for power. As a young dragon he had lusted for it, imagining his entire body swelling with it. He imaged the world bowing to him and realizing that they were in the presence of a god.
Wings flapped above, and then a throaty roar ripped through the skies. His father landed on the ground with a quake.
It was refreshing to see his father again at the height of his ability. Sinewy. Majestic. Fearsome.
Alsatius bore a dragon’s head in his mouth. Blood dripped from its neck and its eyes had rolled back into the head, giving the dragon’s cabochon-like eyes a dirty, glassy look.
Alsatius grinned and crunched the neck in his jaws. The bones cracked like knuckles.
“It is done,” Alsatius said, his voice muffled.
“This will be the first day of the reign of the House of Dark,” Smirnagond said.
The field sloped upward and grew hotter.
They pushed through it, gathering energy in their claws as they climbed.
As they approached the fiery summit of the volcano, silhouettes appeared in the smoke.
Dragons.
A group of them. Thick, stocky Keepers. Long, streamer-like Crafters. Their eyes glowed against the fiery background.
And in the center, a red Keeper dragon with a golden crown atop her head sat on a throne made of fire, dragging her claws across the arms of the throne like a scratching post. A dragon with a crown! It was the mark of a diseased mind gripped with obsession for gold and riches. Dark’s stomach roiled at the sight of it.
Dark heard her measured scratching from yards away. It grated against his ears and made him want to dig his own claws into the rocks.
“Stop right there,” the Dragon Queen said. “I have allowed you traitors to trespass on my mountain long enough.”
Karagarn stepped off her enormous throne and it sank into the ground. Her red scales reflected the pools of lava around her, and she gnashed her white teeth. A necklace of bones rattled around her neck.
Her entourage of dragons gathered around her.
The Darks stopped. Alsatius tossed the dragon’s head on the rocks. The entourage stepped aside as it rolled and stopped in front of Karagarn.
“I trust that you will find your husband’s head in good shape,” Alsatius said, grinning.
The Dragon Queen wailed when she beheld the head.
“You know nothing but destruction, do you? How hard is it to pledge allegiance to me? I’ve never done you any harm.”
The Darks were silent.
“You would have nothing if it weren’t for me,” Karagarn said. “The dragon race owes me for uniting it. Before me, we were splintered, living in caves. But for me, we would never have realized our majesty....”
“Our allegiance is to the aquifer,” Alsatius said. “To the old way of life that you have destroyed.”
“Your allegiance is to power,” Karagarn said. “Let’s be honest. You’ve been nothing but poison to my reign, and I was a fool to fall for your lies. But the time for talking is done. I will rip you apart myself.”
Dark raised his claw a few inches off the ground in anticipation of what was to come. He glanced at one of the dragons in front, a silver dragon with a swarthy face and a stocky build. “Surely you know better, Fenroot?” Dark asked.
Fenroot nodded. “We know much, much better.”
The entourage turned on Karagarn and advanced toward her.
“What are you…?”
Karagarn pointed a claw at the Darks, generating a ball of flames.
But Dark was too fast—he fired a ball of plasma at one of her dragons and it engulfed him, then the dragon’s body emitted a wall of magic that floated in front of the Darks, protecting them. The affected dragon floated suspended in the air, paralyzed.
The spell worked. He had reflected it off the dragon so that he didn’t have to pay the cost.
His mother’s instructions were correct, and he had been practicing this spell for weeks.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Karagarn cried as the dragons tied her down.
The Darks stood over her. She writhed, but wispy ropes held her down.
“You will never get away with this,”’ Karagarn said. “You will face fate for this. You will—”
Alsatius, Smirnagond and Dark tore into her like vultures in a feeding frenzy.
Dark’s teeth seized on her heart and he ripped it out. He tossed it in the air, snapped it in his jaws and swallowed it whole. He tasted scale, bone, and blood, and it was intoxicating.
By the time they were done, Karagarn lay opened up on the ground, and her eyes gave a final sparkle before turning cloudy.
Alsatius spun around and gave a severe look at the entourage.
“To whom do you pledge allegiance now?” he asked, blood dripping from his teeth.
The Darks spread their wings as a sign of royalty as all the dragons bowed to them. Magma bubbled up from one of the pools and spilled onto the rocks.
Wings.
Dark felt his own wings extend to their normal length. About time! What was a dragon without his wings?
He glanced at Karagarn’s body one last time, then pushed it into the pool of magma. It swallowed her body in a bubbly blaze.
His parents took off into the sky and he flew off after them.
- Writer
