Page 1 of Deadly Maiden

Chapter 1

Rorsyd

I land violently, bloodily, skidding to a halt, my feet sputtering across carpet, bodies, and dirt.

I loom over the crib of the offspring of the two monsters that killed Orish. My towering shadow slowly shrinks to man-size, reluctant as it often is to accept my new form.

Around me the tent fabric flaps and flutters then stills.

Struck by anguish and anger, my claws drip with the gore of the babe’s protectors. My heart thuds with the echoes of exhaustion. The flight to this enemy camp took the last of my energy, and my wounds will have their due.

Sunlight paints the scene bright in stark contrast to my despair. I left red streaks on the canvas and a ragged hole in roof and sides. A sideways glance reveals the sprawled corpses of the guards, their faces in the dirt. The idiots thought to prevent me from entering.

I am undone, and what dragonshifter weeps at death?

What Orish suffered was not a mortal death.

Though it feels as if it happened barely seconds ago, an eternity describes the loss far better.

The memory is written in pain.

That battlefield…

It might have been a monumental celebration equipped with rocketing fireworks.

It was not.

The clouds were whispering past as we glided above the field of thousands milling below.

Sounds drift upward. The faint clangs from weapons. The cries. The spectacular eruptions of multi-colored etharum from mage wielders. The battle against the usurper is going well.

An immense summoning shakes the sky, and my vision turns into shivering jelly, a darkness composed of many spots pours upward. This summoning comes from a trifling pair of fae so far away they are sticklike, gesturing with their tiny arms. The cloud of darkthings batter at Orish like a swarm of insects, glueing to him, crawling inside his roaring mouth. His spew vomits a geyser of black that arches groundward yet mocks sense, for it reforms, coalesces, then forces its way through his teeth and back inside.

Horrified, I watch as it destroys him from within.

His wings frantically cup the air then stall.

The plummet and spin as the black binds him, wings trapped, a dark mist dissipating and peeling off in spidery shreds.

I beg for him to stop but he falls and falls, only a tiny piercing scream tells me he may still be conscious.

Theboomas he hits earth, gores deep. The force throws aloft gyrating boulders and clods of fractured ground that darken the sky.

Tomblike cold spreads in my chest.

I swoop across and cry out, attempting to compel him to return to life, yet I know it is futile.

I dare not try to kill these spawned darkthings, but their creators? Yes.

I thunder to them, arrowing lower, finding the two on a small promontory waving toward the battle that teems with thousands of people trying to exterminate each other. Magik streams and swirls, purple, green, stark red…black. The etharum carves swathes of death through the combatants.

My roar summons dragon heat, and I belch a molten stream that rampages forth, my fire-breath colored with incandescent hues. Fried air boils at the edges.

Flames ripple over the pair, crisping them to eye-scalding brightness. Crackling red-and-orange creatures, writhing. Eyes taut, third transparent eyelid protecting them from the heat, I hover then circle them as they convulse. I eat their screams, pleased yet unsatisfied, for what can ever sate this wrongness they gifted?

I leave them to their deaths.

Orish lies, frozen forever, encased in a god-rotting, darkthing cocoon.

---