Prologue
Prologue
Akhtar
A khtar Axeland, the half-breed disgrace of the Axeland Frost Dragon Clan, peered up through his veil of bleached seashells and rainbow-colored glass beads, tears streaming down his tanned cheeks relentlessly.
He was naked aside from the thin decorative covering on his face, clutching his private parts as he crouched low on the ground. The young dragonkin’s head was pressed to the stone-cold floor that felt like a block of ice—because it was. The boy kneeled on intricately carved blocks of ice in the mighty mountainous palace of his captor’s God, Nocturnos, the Divine Embodiment of Shadows and Light. A God he wanted nothing to do with—a God he was meant to breed with against his will.
Akhtar trembled; the position he was forced to keep was painful and awkward. The chilly wind slapping his bare back felt like a whip on raw, blistered skin. The thatched roof wooden hut he’d called home for fourteen years did not prepare him to withstand the freezing cold of the mountain blanketed in perpetual snow.
The tropical environment the dragonkin child was raised in was natural to the archipelagos of the Lunarian supercontinent. It was home, a home razed to the ground he would never step foot in again.
Ruefully, Akhtar wondered if Nocturnos’ emissaries brought the winter weather with them on their travels. Claws dug into his chin, snapping him from his musings, forcing him to gulp another mouthful of the bitter ‘cleansing’ liquid that made his stomach twist into knots.
They’d come in the dark, clerics, and acolytes, their frosty steps winding up from the beach to their front door unannounced. It had a name, that particular magic mixing shadow and ice, but Akhtar didn’t remember it. His memory was never perfect, unnatural for a member of the Axeland Clan. They were famous for their ability to absorb the histories of their world, down to every detail, like grains of sand stored in their memories, even if most were illiterate.
They carried knowledge far and wide through song and dance, but Akhtar had only learned of his bastard status when the bastards pinning him down had captured him.
It was his destiny to remember. And the first memory should have been the whole of the Ballad of the Dragonborn, followed by the name of the icy blue tonic being force-fed to him. It cleared the mind, as Akhtar’s captors liked to say. It would undoubtedly clear his bowels if the unnamed, masked head cleric of Nocturnos didn’t stop making him?—
“Drink,” the purebred dragonkin bellowed, tone lifting in annoyance. He did not heed Akhtar’s unspoken plea for mercy, snapping his fingers to summon soldiers to his side. In an instant, his men were on Akhtar, holding his arms wide and forcing his face forward, upward, calloused hands prying his jaw wide open.
“Don’t you wish to please the Gods?” the cleric whispered as he leaned forward. “Or do you wish to be passed over?”
“Y-yes, sir. N-no, sir!” Akhtar whimpered, his voice breaking and tears overflowing as his confusion and weariness clouded his better judgment.
He had already seen a boy ‘passed over.’ A boy two years younger than him was cast over the mountaintop, his wings ripped out, and he did not want to meet the same cruel fate.
“...So then, drink and call upon Him!” the cleric bellowed again, pale blue mask shimmering like the scales of a fish in the dim candlelight. No, it was that of a dragon, the mask seemingly etched on his face, morphing like skin with each movement.
They ripped the young dragonkin from his dying human mother’s arms only a week ago, and yet, expected him to master all this nonsense. Her wailing carried on the salty wind as he and his sister, Rikisha, were taken to the Nocturnal Mountains on the continent.
It seemed a world away from his tiny island overlooking the crystal-clear waters of the Xersus Ocean stretching into infinity on the horizon. But it had only been a three-day journey by boat to the mainland.
It only took three days to arrive at the end of his life as he knew it. And possibly, Akhtar was facing the end of all his day if he refused to summon that lust-filled demon disguised as a God.
He cried for Rikisha rather than himself then, knowing the lie they harbored. Rikisha’s secret would get them killed someday if his failure to summon the God didn’t first. Akhtar hadn’t expected his mother to fight for them, even if it was just through her tears. She was a servant in the annihilated Axeland royal house. She was not blood-related to either of them, and yet…
It moved Akhtar to tears then. How had things fallen apart so fast?
He had to say yes to these lunatics’ demands. If he said no, he would be deemed a heretic and, worse, surrender his beloved half-sister to their clutches, who was sheltered in return for his ‘service,’ a maidservant for now.
Protected.
The only logical answer was to say yes, to persevere, and to find a way for them to escape later. But Akhtar chose death instead.
“No!” he screamed, rearing back as he bit down as hard as he could on the cleric’s outstretched hand. “No more!” he said, the words muffled and incoherent.
Akhtar’s teeth were embedded in the old man’s sagging, pale skin, and a blast of ice from his trembling mouth was freezing the head cleric’s hand into a useless block of ice. Too slowly. Akhtar’s newfound powers were far too weak to stop him.
He howled, slamming the boy sideways against the wall so hard that Akhtar tasted his blood in his mouth. His vision went in and out, ears ringing, rainbow-colored lights flickering like lightning sparks before they vanished. And all that was left was the chill in his bones and the darkness of night closing in on him.
Rot and ruin. Endless beatings and longing for death. For over a year, he was held captive by them. He waited for the right moment to escape, finally relenting and learning their twisted ways, deceiving the clerics each and every day that he was the purebred Axeland.
One year dragged into another and another until he and Rikisha were twenty-one and eighteen. Years flew by, accumulating like a snowstorm that threatened each moment to freeze their weary bodies over.
But then, suddenly, they were old enough to fend for themselves. Strong enough to beat back the guards with their frosty breath and icy claws as weapons. But they were too young to understand what awaited them in the outside world could be worse than being held captive in the mountains.
However, on their shared birthday, born exactly three years apart under super blue moons, brother and sister, hand-in-hand, leaped to certain death, hoping to live as fugitives rather than stay another day, plummeting, wingless, into the endless night.