by Eric Vall
We followed the king through his chambers and into the palace, and for an old man, he sure could book it. I nearly had to jog to keep pace with him, and I kept looking back to make sure Vala was behind us, but Nike hadn’t let her out of his sight.
Isabella looked slightly overwhelmed, but she didn’t slow down or question the plan, and something told me she’d fit in with us just fine.
We burst through the front doors and started to turn toward the cliffs when a large shadow passed overhead.
I looked up to see familiar white scales as Eskandar flew over us.
“Lord Evan!” he bellowed. “Thank the gods you’ve returned!”
“Why?” I called out. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been an attack on one of the mountain villages,” he explained. “We must hurry!”
Chapter 11
“Take them all back inside!” I ordered Nike. “We don’t have time to load up. I’m flying with Eskandar.”
“Another dragon?” Vala gasped and covered her mouth. “It can’t be.”
“It can, and he is a valiant warrior for our country,” Alyona replied as she shooed the other women back inside before she turned to look at me. “Be careful.”
“Always,” I murmured as I sprinted further from the castle and transformed into my scaly dragon form.
“Send for me if you need help,” Nike called out as I kicked off into the sky and looked down at my group.
“I will,” I agreed before I nodded to Eskandar.
The large white dragon dipped his head, flapped his wings, and took off to the south of the palace. I followed his lead, and we soared past the Breach and headed further into the Mihireti Mountains. Eskandar activated his camouflage ability, and his scales soon blended into the scenery as we flew. I tried to avoid looking down at the murky surface of the Breach, but my gut told me I had to at least take a peek.
When I let my gaze drop, my stomach tightened at the number of demons that were now more visible just below the surface of the seal. Instead of shadows, I could see their slender bodies with clawed hands that pawed at the thin layer of magical protection holding them back from our world.
I clenched my talons, but I continued to fly next to Eskandar. We had to help the village before I could get back on the track to closing the Breach once and for all.
“So, what exactly did you see?” I yelled over the wind that whooshed past our ears as we flew.
“I was doing my rounds, though I’ve remained unseen,” he explained. “I saw smoke curling up from between those peaks, but by the time I got there, whoever attacked it was already gone.”
Eskandar pointed a few miles ahead of us, and I could just make out thin wisps of smoke that still floated in the air, but there were no other signs of an attacker so far.
Still, I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as we got closer to the village.
Finally, the white dragon slowed his pace as we crested a peak and hovered over a small village.
Most of the huts were piles of ash, and the remaining buildings were barely standing. Some had one or two walls, and only a handful had all four, but all the grass roofs were gone completely. The damage was hauntingly familiar, and I growled in frustration at the sight. Several of the citizens milled around the center of the town, and they looked up with gasps of shock when they realized we were above them.
“Oh, gods, it’s back!” one of them screamed.
“No!” another screeched.
Within seconds, they’d all fled the square in a frenzy of flailing arms and wails of help.
“Wait!” I called out. “We aren’t here to hurt you!”
“We were already attacked by the dragon beast today!” a man yelled from the doorway of a semi-intact hut. “Just leave us alone!”
“That wasn’t a dragon,” I insisted as I ignored Eskandar’s questioning look. “Please, just hear me out.”
The man cowered under his weak defense, but he didn’t run inside when Eskandar and I landed in the middle of the now empty square. His eyes widened when he realized there were two of us, but we shifted into our human forms before he could freak out even more.
“Kind sir, we are here to help,” Eskandar declared with a bow. “Could you please direct us to whoever leads your village?”
“You mean Elder Pierson,” the man supplied and frowned. “If he survived, he’s in the hut directly behind you.”
“If he survived?” I repeated as I narrowed my eyes on the man. “No one has checked on the village’s Elder?”
“We just got the fires put out,” he explained. “Then you arrived.”
“Okay, we’ll check on him now,” I grunted and turned to face the hut he’d pointed out. “This doesn’t look good.”
“Not at all,” Eskandar agreed as we looked over the burned hut. “You said it’s not a dragon. Is that because we’re the only ones left? You didn’t know I existed before you rescued me.”
“No, I’ve seen this type of damage before,” I murmured. “Just a couple days ago, we hunted down some kind of hellbeast that attacked a Mahigan village near Hatra.”
“You don’t know what it was?” he wondered, and a concerned look came over his chiseled features.
“Nope.” I shook my head and frowned. “Emma touched its talon and picked up on a relationship to a dark, shadow figure, but that’s all we know.”
“Then it appears the first beast had a friend,” he mused.
“Unfortunately,” I agreed. “Let’s go talk to Elder Pierson.”
We stalked across the square toward the hut, and I tried to decide how to knock on a door that looked ready to fall off its hinges already. Luckily, it was decided for me when a frail old man pulled the door open and stared at us with narrowed gray eyes. He appeared to be human, and his skin looked like dark leather as though he’d spent years baking in the sun. His hair was gray and fell just past the shoulders of his ash-covered white robes.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Are you Elder Pierson?” I asked in a kind voice.
“Who wants to know?” The old man regarded me with blatant suspicion.
“Lord Evan of Hatra,” I replied as I held my hands up to show I meant no harm. “And this is my friend, Eskandar of the White Jade Temple.”
“You come from the palace?” Pierson asked, and then his expression changed as though he’d finally hit a realization. “Oh, gods, you’re the new husband of Princess Alyona!”
“Indeed,” I confirmed with a smile. “Now, you understand we mean you no harm?”
“Yes, of course, my lord.” He dipped his head. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, I’d actually like to do something for you,” I countered. “I’d like to help you get rid of whatever attacked your village. Did you see it?”
“Some of my people thought it was a dragon,” Pierson answered as he brushed some of the ash from his clothes. “I knew it wasn’t. I’ve seen a few dragons in my time, and that thing wasn’t it. Besides, it threw lava, not fire.”
“I was afraid of that,” I muttered. “Did you see which way it went?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I hid as soon as I saw its first drops hit the buildings. I only came out when I heard your voices and didn’t recognize them.”
“Okay, we’ll find it,” I decided. “Don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Pierson scoffed as he straightened his back and stared straight into my eyes. “And I don’t need your help. We have our own warriors.”
“I’m sure you do,” I acknowledged. “But this beast is unlike anything they’ve seen before. You can’t expect your men to know how to defeat it.”
“They’ve been trained well,” he insisted. “They’ll figure it out.”
“I’ve already killed one of these things,” I argued. “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt, and I can help prevent that. Let me help you.”
Pierson cocked his head to the side as he mulled over wha
t I’d said, and then he finally released a huge sigh.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why do I want to help you?” I arched an eyebrow with curiosity.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Why would someone as important as the king’s son-in-law want to help a small mountain village? We don’t contribute to His Majesty’s palace or provide any sort of assistance to other villages. We stay to ourselves.”
“None of that matters to me,” I answered. “You’re my people, and I’ve vowed to do anything I can for my people.”
My response seemed to surprise the old man, and he chuckled as he shook his head.
“You are a brave dragon, Lord Evan,” he said with a smile. “None of us knew where you came from or who you were. It has been assumed that you were simply another courting noble who got lucky and finally talked the princess into marriage, but it seems that was an underestimation of you. I think the beast flew east of here, though I don’t know how far or how fast it went.”
“Thank you, Elder Pierson,” I replied with a humble bow. “I will do everything I can to make this right for you. In the meantime, I’d like to send a few people to help you repair the damages, if that’s alright.”
“I’m sure King Rodion would be happy to send a few of his men,” Eskandar agreed.
“Then I will accept.” Pierson nodded. “Thank you, my lord.”
“We’ll let you know once we’ve taken care of it,” I told him. “Until then, try to keep your people inside the standing buildings. This creature is ruthless, and it will take as many lives as it can.”
“We will heed your warning,” he murmured before he opened his mouth as if to say something else and hesitated.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“It’s just… something you should probably know,” Pierson said with a frown. “The beast… it spoke to us.”
“It spoke?” I blinked in surprise.
The other beast hadn’t seemed to have any ability to talk, but I hadn’t really given it a chance to, either.
“Yes,” he replied. “It said to pledge our allegiance or suffer the consequences. I had no intention of pledging my village to that vile creature, so I told everyone to stay hidden.”
“Shit,” I cursed. “Thanks, Pierson. We’ve got it from here.”
The old man nodded, and then he returned to his home and shut the door.
“How are we going to find this thing?” Eskandar asked once we’d started our walk back to the square.
“It leaves a trail of ashes,” I answered. “We need to go talk to the king and have him send some men to help the village. Then we’ll track the ashes and get rid of this thing. Who knows how many other towns he’ll visit to try to make this deal.”
“Let’s do it.” The white dragon nodded before we both shifted into our dragon forms and kicked off toward the sky.
We headed back to the temple, where the king and the rest of my group waited on the balcony. I motioned for Eskandar to follow me, and we hovered next to the stone landing as they rushed over.
“What did you find?” Rodion demanded.
“The village was attacked by the same kind of beast we found in the Mahigan village,” I answered, and then I shook my head when the king looked confused. “I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you about it, sorry. Anyway, Aunt Emma said its master was a shadowy figure, but that’s all we know about it. Oh, and it had lava magic.”
“Oh, gods,” he grunted. “It must have escaped the underworld, which means the seal on the Breach has loosened its hold somewhere.”
“I worried the same thing,” I agreed. “Either way, it means we need to hunt this thing down before it destroys some other villages. This one was also a little different than the one we killed before.”
“How so?” Alyona wondered.
“It actually spoke and told the villagers they could pledge their allegiance to avoid the consequences,” I answered with a frown. “The beast we found before didn’t talk to us, but maybe it didn’t want to. I don’t know.”
“Or this one is more evolved,” Rodion suggested. “I think we need to ensure our people’s safety before you go on your hunt. There could be more damage we don’t know about, and you may get lucky and catch the creature in the act.”
I wavered in my agreement, but I finally decided the king had much more experience than I did. Not necessarily with this creature, but in general, he knew a lot more about Rahma.
“Okay,” I finally said. “We’ll do a quick flyover of the area to check on all the mountain villages. For now, can you send some people to help Elder Pierson’s village clean things up? They have buildings on the verge of collapse.”
“Thank you, son,” Rodion boomed. “I will send them to him straightaway.”
“Alright, let’s go,” I said to Eskandar.
We floated back up above the temple before we changed direction and returned south.
“You take east, and I’ll take west,” Eskandar called out.
“Got it,” I agreed.
We split off over the Breach and kept our eyes on the villages below. As we got closer to Pierson’s village, I realized most of the places close to the temple were untouched, but the further we went, the more burnt-out trees and grass we saw.
“Lord Evan!” the white dragon barked.
I veered over to where he’d stopped and looked down to see two villages that were only about half a mile apart. One village was still smoking, and we couldn’t see any movement on the ground, but the next village was completely untouched. Not a single scorch mark could be seen, and the fire damage on the ground stopped almost perfectly at its border.
“What the hell?” I murmured. “Let’s get a closer look.”
We landed on the outer edge of the village and shifted to our human forms as we walked casually inside. A few people watched us with interest, but they didn’t question our sudden appearance.
Once we walked to the other end of the village, I noticed a pair of brown eyes watching us from inside a large, circular building. I motioned for Eskandar to follow me as I rapped on the door, and a few seconds later, a pudgy woman with stringy brown hair and the same brown eyes opened the door with a forced smile.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, we’re looking for the village Elder,” I answered.
“Elders,” she corrected. “That would be me, Torrance, and my brothers, Tomas and Trapper. They aren’t here right now.”
“We need to talk to all three of you,” I said in a firm voice. “Now.”
“I-I will send f-for them,” the woman stammered as she waved to someone behind her and stepped outside. “What is th-this about?”
“It would be better if we talked to all three of you, Elder Torrance,” I answered and looked around.
“You have a beautiful village,” Eskandar remarked.
“Thank you,” she sighed. “We’ve worked hard to maintain it.”
“I see,” I murmured. “When will your brothers arrive?”
“Any minute, ahhh, I didn’t get your name,” Torrance said with another fake smile.
“Lord Evan,” I filled in, and my inner dragon grinned when she took in a sharp breath. “You’ve heard of me, then?”
“E-Everyone has, my lord,” she stuttered. “You are to be the next king.”
“I am,” I confirmed.
Before she could ask anything else, two men who looked like identical twins rounded the hut and stopped next to Torrance.
“What’s going on?” one of them boomed.
“Tomas, this is Lord Evan,” Torrance said as she nodded her head toward me. “Watch your tone.”
“Oh, my gods, Lord Evan, I’m so sorry,” Tomas apologized, and he blanched. “I had no idea.”
“It’s fine.” I waved him off and watched them all with curiosity. “Have you had any visitors lately?”
“Ah, no, not that I can recall,” Trapper replied with a shrug. “We don’t get many people up here that aren
’t family.”
“Understandable,” I mused as I looked over all three of them for any signs of deception. “Anyone else care to answer?”
“Well, Tomas and I have been hunting for the past few days,” Trapper said. “We only returned this morning. Is this about those fires I saw in the forest?”
“Shush!” Torrance hissed with wide eyes.
“No, no, please continue,” I urged him. “What fires?”
Trapper glanced at his sister with confusion before he faced me again.
“It’s the whole reason we headed back earlier,” he continued. “We weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow night, but most of the forest creatures were on the run, and then I saw all the smoke. We worried it was our village, but when we got back, nothing was wrong, so I figured the fires were all in the forest.”
“And a few other villages,” I said as I focused my attention on the woman. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Elder Torrance?”
“Oh, gods,” she groaned and dropped her face in her hands. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“What was?” I pressed. “Tell me everything.”
“The demon creature,” Torrance wailed as her eyes filled with tears. “He said he would spare our village, our people! All I had to do was swear to help him when he needed it and decline to help the king.”
“You made a deal with a demon?” Tomas gasped as he gaped at his sister. “Why would you do that? And without us?”
“You were gone!” she insisted. “I had to protect our people!”
“By pledging your allegiance to the underworld,” I scoffed. “Yeah, I’m sure that deal would never go sour.”
“You are a foolish woman.” Eskandar shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “You put many other villages in danger.”
“Maybe we should burn yours down like theirs are already,” I snarled as I conjured a fireball in my hand.
“No, please!” Torrance begged as she dropped to her knees before me and clasped her hands. “I just wanted to keep them safe! I’d do anything for them!”
“Clearly,” I muttered and twirled the fiery orb in my palm. “But nothing for those around you.”