Chagon’s stomach growled as he kicked a stone off the trail and stared out over the River Galgooth rushing along on his right side, “When all this is done, and the ranks of them riders of Druindahl swell with our numbers, I pray we ride back to Havenstahl to push them beasts all the way back across that Great Sea. Can you even imagine what a sight that would be, red flags flapping above us while the thunder of mighty drums keep us in step?”
He glanced over at Galind, a short horse hand with pale, stringy hair and a slight chin. They had only just met early in their journey together, but they quickly became friends. Some of the soldiers had taken to picking on the sickly young man, and Chagon had stuck up for him. Any one of them could have easily sent him to Lake one on one, but when he stood in front of Galind and made clear they would have to go through him first, they let the diminutive horse hand be. Perhaps they respected the courage it took for a simple farmer with no training to stand up to hardened soldiers with many battles under their belts. Whatever their reasons, Galind became his bosom chum.
“It seems you might be walking in your sleep,” Chagon commented after Galind failed to respond.
“Please forgive me,” Galind seemed startled as he shook his head. “I guess I’d been stuck in a waking dream.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a case of the trail sleep,” Chagon agreed. “We’ve been at it long enough.”
Chagon reached into a horse sack he had draped over his shoulder and fished around until he found a nice hunk of dried meat. “Here, have a go at that. The sun has a good stretch of sky to cross before we’ll be stopping to take any nourishment. Them trembling legs might fall out from under you at any moment.”
“Aye,” Galind accepted the gift, “they feel that way, and my back. Too many nights under the stars have it all twisted and gnarled up.”
“You might be speaking for all of us,” Chagon agreed. “Chew that down, and let’s head up to the front to bother Tarantian. I wouldn’t mind an update.”
Galind nodded, and they quickened their pace. It was a short journey. The wagons were painfully slow, and Chagon preferred to remain near the front of the line. They passed the lead wagon and kept on toward three rough-looking men mounted upon sturdy horses. Chagon did not know the names of the riders to the left or right. They were riders from Havenstahl, rough ones. Both rode white steeds speckled with brown and dressed in blue, white, and shimmering prang, the colors of Havenstahl. Tarantian rode between them mounted on a mighty black steed, dressed in the colors of Druindahl, red, black, and shimmering prang.
Just as Chagon prepared to hail Tarantian—and hear the jibes from his two companions, one of whom was among the group Chagon stood up to on Galind’s behalf—a horn blared. The horn blast was not necessary. The rider who blew the horn was only about one-hundred yards up the trail, his horse galloping fast. The three riders with him attacked the trail just as hard.
“Grizzly mongs,” the horn blower yelled, his voice dripping with fear.
Tarantian raised an arm to stop the wagon train. Riders all up and down the length of it began halting wagons and pulling loose groups of travelers into tight columns. “How far off?” the question carried on a deep, rich baritone.
Wild with fear, the rider’s eyes conveyed his message more clearly than any words could. “About a half a mile and closing fast,” he shouted just the same.
“You led those monsters right to us,” Tarantian hissed. Then he turned and shouted, “Get out of those wagons, and get off the trail. Riders, to me!”
Chaos settled into the group as travelers fleeing their wagons for the tall grass of the fields along either side of the road crossed paths with mounted soldiers pounding the hard-packed dirt of the trail. A young boy was trampled as soon as his feet hit the ground. The rider—ready for battle with eyes seeing only red—barely noticed. The young lad’s mother saw it all. Though her pitiable cries were drowned out by the sound of hoof beats echoing off carriages, the anguish twisting up her face spoke loudly enough.
Chagon saw it all too: the boy, his mother, and the pain. This was his moment. Without a sword or horse, he would be wasted at the front. Perhaps there were other ways he could help. He made two steps toward the sad embrace—a young mother holding the battered carcass of her son—before another rider trampled her into the dead child.
“No,” Chagon cried out, his tone dripping with misplaced rage. He fell to his knees. Of course, the rider was blameless. It was an unfortunate accident. A small child fleeing toward safety and the shield who might defend him collided. It was no one’s fault. The fact did nothing to ease the tragedy.
The world slowed around him. Riders charged toward the front and travelers—recent vagabonds displaced by the fury of gods—moved about the periphery in slow motion as he focused on the bloody mother crushed beneath the hooves of a charging horse. His mouth continued to move as his body tensed. A tear full of rage, sorrow, and anguish formed on his eyelid before trickling down his cheek. Would life ever again make sense? None of the victims dashed and broken on the trail, trampled by the very soldiers who would give their lives to defend them, had done anything to deserve their fates.
Time became an abstract thing, something just outside the limits of his awareness, as he stared at the bloody scene. He had no idea how long he had knelt there silently lamenting before Galind’s voice raised up over the ruckus and dragged him from the trance. There were no words, just a howl dripping with pain or terror, or some other horrible thing Chagon was unable to define in that moment when it reached is ears. Could anything be worse than what he had just witnessed? The sad answer was yes.
It seemed a labor simply to move his head enough to see the slight, young horse hand who had recently become his most bosom of chums, the young lad whom he had decided it was his job to protect. By the time he had, that young man’s arm was arcing over the top of a carriage. He had to close his eyes to keep them from becoming saturated in Galind’s blood. He felt it on his face. It was warm, and there was too much of it. After wiping his face, he shaded his eyes to look and immediately wished he had not.
The terror in Galind’s eyes was quite possibly the saddest thing Chagon had ever witnessed in his life, even sadder than watching a young mother trampled while mourning her dead son. Perhaps it was because of the affection he had developed sharing the trail with his new friend over the past few weeks, but it burned him to his soul. There was a helplessness in those wide, pleading eyes. Somehow, they seemed to accuse him. Something about the look said, “You were supposed to protect me.” It was probably all in his head, but it did not make it any easier.
He was sure it was not fear holding him in place helplessly staring back into those terrified, accusing eyes, but something kept him there on his knees. Even when glistening fangs stretching out from a massive, shaggy face flashed and bit through Galind’s neck, Chagon could not move. The accusing eyes were gone, and the innocent horse hand’s screaming stopped. A moment later, Galind had been ripped in two and the beast had moved on.
Everything else blurred around Chagon’s periphery. There were no sounds or smells. The gory pile of bloody, mangled flesh he stared at was all that remained of his only friend, and the only thing in his awareness. He suddenly felt exceedingly small, as helpless as that dead pile. Were he a soldier, armed and trained to fight, perhaps he could have been a true protector to the lad. But he was not that. He was a simple farmer, nothing more. Outside of his field, he was nothing. A scream formed in his throat. He could not hear anything above a loud ringing in his ears, but it must have been booming as much as it burned his throat.
Chagon remained there staring at the same spot and screaming a song he could not hear until something crashed into him toppling him to the ground. The ringing suddenly ceased. It was a sad thing. Each new sound was more horrible than the last. Bones popped, teeth gnashed sloppily, and beasts roared. The screams were the worst.
As disoriented as he was, Chagon’s survival instincts finally kicked in
. He looked down at the heavy thing which had knocked him from his trance. It was a soldier. One of the nameless riders who had accompanied Tarantian at the front of the wagon train. It was the one he had stood up to for Galind. The burly soldier had looked so frightening that day, rotten clenched teeth peeking out from his scowl under eyes that looked no more than a whisper from insanity. Lying there dead on the trail, he just looked like another sad and senseless loss, no better or worse than Galind or the poor mother with her child. One of those near crazy eyes was gone and his nose was off. Three claw marks ran from the top of his head and clean through his jaw. His insides stretched out from his torn open gut to about twelve feet behind him. Chagon heaved.
After spilling the contents of his own gut onto the trail next to the dead soldier—as scarce as food had been on the trail, it was not much more than a bit of bile—rage consumed him. It was not so much anger at the beasts attacking his caravan. Of course, they would be the ones to feel his wrath. Still, somewhere deep in his mind, beneath the pain, sorrow, terror, and rage, he knew they were just beasts motivated by hunger or other primal desires over which they had no control. It was Coeptus. Him or her or them, whatever that thing was, that is precisely who deserved his rage. He pulled the sword from the dead soldier’s hand and turned toward the front.
Moments earlier, he would have run for his life. There had to be hundreds of them, massive, hairy beasts all fangs and claws and shaggy white fur climbing over each other and tearing into the hard-packed dirt of the trail. Most of the riders had abandoned their mounts and fought the beasts with their swords. The few who remained mounted charged with lances. A monster leapt up high in the air and swatted a rider down into his horse, crushing them both into the ground before biting a hole in the poor soldier from his shoulders to his waist. Two more riders found similar fates only moments later. It was a slaughter.
The sound Chagon made as he charged toward the melee was foreign to his ears. It sounded like it had come from someone else. He saw Tarantian kill one of the beasts he was battling at the front. The idea that a simple farm boy could become a soldier seemed less silly as he gripped the sword in his hand and pumped his legs to hurry toward a battle against terrifying, monstrous beasts next to a true hero.
Then another hero fell. One of the monsters slashed clean through the soldier’s neck with claws that sliced meat more efficiently than any sword Chagon had ever seen. He barely had time to think he had never seen a head fly that far before when a massive arm smashed against the side of his head. The fur was course and thick. As he spun through the air, he locked eyes with Tarantian who had been spun round and dropped to his knees by a similar swat. That moment—as Chagon spun helpless and Tarantian stared back with something akin to fear in his eyes—seemed an eternity. That eternity ended as Chagon watched a massive, clawed fist smash the side of his hero’s head and send him careening into the brush alongside the trail.
The ground was hard when Chagon finally slammed into it. The idea he might leap back to his feet and help the armed men fight the monsters tearing through their column lasted the briefest of moments. The hard reality of a large rock put an end to it when Chagon’s head pounded against it. Consciousness fled quickly, but not quickly enough that he missed more sounds of wood smashing, people screaming, and flesh tearing. Of the things he saw, smelled, and felt on the trail that day, none of them were as bad as what he had heard. The sounds were the worst. If Coeptus had even the slightest bit of mercy, they would take the memories of those sounds from him.
Chapter 13
Sleep
The top of Mount Alharin was a contradiction, a tranquil garden with a pond and greenspace to spare on the flattened peak of a stony mountain the top of which should be covered in a thick blanket of snow. Of course, this contradiction was an illusion. The fruits and the grass were real enough, but none of them belonged. They all thrived under a dome of protection cast by Brerto hundreds of summers prior that had stood the test of time. The god considered it his paradise. It was a paradise few besides Brerto had ever seen. When Cialia materialized at the mouth of the god’s cave, she became only the second member of the race of men to behold the glorious site, her brother being the first.
Brerto was there just inside the cave’s entrance. Eyes closed tight, he mumbled incantations under his breath while his staff glowed with the light of a thousand suns. Cialia thought of destroying him right then and there, exploding him to dust with a thought. She could do that, burn him from the inside out, and she would. But lessons are lost if not learned. There were accusations to be made, and she needed him to hear them. Whatever happened to his consciousness after she scattered him to the wind—Coeptus willing, he would suffer until the end of time—it was imperative her accusations remained on his mind at least as long as her flames consumed him.
“Never again, coward,” she said, her tone even and cool as the flames she called to swirl around her cast an orange glow on her white robe.
Brerto’s eyes—those beautiful and terrible things—snapped open as a smile spread across his face, “I have been waiting for this moment since your mother, that whore, slipped her vile body into the Lake and let it impregnate her. Of course, this is not the outcome for which I had hoped. Maelich should have killed Helias and ended this game.” He paused for a moment before adding, “And you, the afterthought, a lost soul clinging to a great power, why do you persist? Why do you care? This story is not your own. No prophecies exist where you do anything of import. You are what you have always been, the savior’s sister.”
Cialia’s tone remained flat and emotionless, “Your jibes hurt my brother. You and Kallum certainly know how to raise his ire. He is passionate. His emotions cloud his judgement. Those tactics do not affect me. I too am passionate, for my people. However, I am not driven by emotion. It is justice which drives me, compels me to hold you to account. You have mistreated my people and all creatures under my protection, and I have judged you. Now you will pay for their pain and suffering. Believe me, it will not be a fair trade. Complete fairness would require I spend eternity making you suffer as you have made all living things on Ouloos suffer. Sadly, I must administer your sentence quickly, as I have more gods to kill. You all are evil, and you all will die.”
Brerto’s laugh was deafening. It shook the earth, but it also shook the air. When it finally finished, he continued in a more measured tone, “And where is the missing dragon? His fragile mind broke far more completely than I expected when Kallum’s priests took his son. I would love to take a walk through his consciousness right now. What a clouded disaster it must be.”
Cialia set her jaw tight and replied flatly, “I am the Dragon, and my fire will be your end. I will erase you from the histories. None will ever again speak your foul name.”
“You are no dragon,” the god spat. “You are a little girl playing at simplicity in your plain smock as if you are above the desires of men, a shadow of the true power of this place, your brother. Of course, he understands his power. I trained him. You are nothing but raw angst personified in a terrified shell of a person who knows not her way and plays with forces she cannot comprehend.”
Cialia’s eyes glowed red as the flames swirling about her thickened and spun faster. She raised her hand with an accusing finger pointing at the god before her. The fear she hoped to see etched in the features of his face was absent. He looked satisfied, like he had expected this exact outcome. Just as she was about to release her flame and burn him to dust, he slammed his staff against the rocks. The world around her exploded in light.
Cialia’s flame was never released as her body lifted from the ground. She floated there as the world moved in slow motion around her, rocks lifted from the ground as the mountaintop beneath her split open. Everything was bathed in light so bright she could barely make out shapes. Nothing around her had any tangible shape or form. Everything melted together until no distinct edges existed. Then everything went black.
***
Thousa
nds of Dragons, some flying, some thinking, and some lounging in the perfection of the Lake all cried out with one voice. That voice carried sorrow and hurt and pain. None at the Lake that day was the individual owner of that pain, but all Dragons were one together. They all felt Cialia’s pain, and their cries were for her.
“No,” Helias gave voice to the feeling.
“Our sister is lost,” Lameah cried.
“All hope is lost,” Helias agreed as tears flowed freely from her perfect eyes. “Ouloos is lost.”
Chapter 14
Training
The sun blazed furious above the cracked land, blistering the dry dirt beneath. Columns of Shaiwah worked through sword techniques as Maelich barked commands. The trainees remained protected from the mighty sun’s fury by the blue dye with which they coated their bodies. Maelich was less fortunate. He wore a cloth over his head like a hood to keep his skin from burning. The water he had soaked it with had long evaporated. Any moisture remaining was sweat which had boiled off his head.
Ymitoth stood beside him watching the technique of the students before them. Two stood out among the rest. “Hey there, Ding and Zig,” he called out, “step to the front.”
Ding looked proud. Zig looked like a tubber being led off to slaughter. But both men walked up to the front as instructed. Maelich flashed a reassuring smile at Zig hoping to ease his mind a bit. It did little to help the poor fellow who still looked like he wanted to run away.
“All of you, have a look at these two. They get it. Keep an eye on their technique,” Ymitoth raised his voice so all could hear. Then he looked over at Zig, “Hey there, you can pair with me.”
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