CHAPTER 1 – BATTLE
Battle is a Blood Dragon’s soul; rage and wrath are the very blood and bones that make us. We fight, we fuck, and we don’t stop until it’s over, as I shift up fast after my sister, Lithava Andersen, to end her in the skies.
I race through the starry midnight after my sister, as my drakes take on hers within the ring of False Black Dragon Knights that surround us in the ancient vale.
Snow lies everywhere below us in the hidden city up in Magnussen lands, glimmering white beneath the crystal-bright stars and setting moon.
I don’t even know how long we’ve fought, as we hurl massive dives of magic at each other, surging in on fast wings to take each other out of the skies. Snarling and vicious, Lithava and I are both terrible in our power as the battle rages above the blasted-out cavern of the ancient citadel.
Both Bloodwalkers, equal in our might.
We have each Bloodbonded four drakes to solidify our power—just like our ancestors Hedda and Aesa Anderlen once did. We fight like they did now, sister against sister, as tremendous swathes of auric fire heave from us in masterful maneuvers, all through the skies.
Although dawn is coming, a dark feeling takes me as my drakes and I fight. A terrible foreboding devours me as I roar, full of rage and wrath, hammering my sister with my united Bloodwalker power all through the brightening morning.
Because although this is what Blood Dragons live for, what we’re born for, all I feel is sundering.
Something about this battle is ripping us apart; even though Lithava has screwed the pooch too many times, resurrecting the Black Dragon of All Souls to terrorize this world like it did in ages past, not to mention cursing me twice and betraying our people with her takeover of the Black Dragon Knights, something about this battle is beyond furious.
Utterly deadly.
Vicious with insane intent, my sister and her drakes hammer us as we give it right back, in spades.
But even though my drakes and I shine like falling stars now, seething with ancient sigils blazing all through our flesh, thanks to the power surging through us from the cavern below, it’s a terrible magic that devours us.
A sun-hot power, which shines brighter than a hundred supernovas as we fight, we’re it and it’s us, as we rip through the skies with everything the gods gave us, pounding through our bones and veins.
A godlike power, it’s terrible in its seething rage and furious glory. We shine with it, we blaze with it; and something about it devours us, as I feel myself and my drakes unite now, in a way we’ve never done before.
To kill those who’ve betrayed us—and banish them from this world, completely.
If I wanted my sister dead before, when she led a coup against our uncle twenty years ago, I want her even more dead now that I’ve discovered she’s the mastermind behind the Black Dragon’s second rise.
She’s my enemy—to the end of the world and back; even as I feel that insane, rageful madness devour me, I feel how something has taken my sister and her drakes, as well.
Some terrible power, just as dark as ours is bright, has devoured them, as they fight with a hellish madness coursing through them, too. I feel it roar all through my bones as the oilslick evil that lives beneath the fissure in the cavern’s floor infects my sister and her drakes.
Just as much as the star-white sigils all around the cavern inundate us.
But though the ancient power in the cavern of the underground city is godlike in its intensity, the dark evil from the rift isn’t giving up as it surges anew, searing through the air in insane hell-ropes of violet and oilslick-black sigildry.
Seared with nasty crimson edges like a disease, those sigils careen through my sister and her drakes, devouring them as they fight. I feel how that fell blackness pushes their minds, as they retaliate in coordinated drives against us.
Though we have our full five Bloodmates today, while Lithava and her drakes currently number only three, our enemies slash gargantuan volleys of oilslick-black auric fire through the air at us.
Just as dark as our fire is light, their passion is ruin and devastation, countering our love and salvation, as my drakes and I rip and roar to return the insane ferocity of my sister and her mates.
As the first light of dawn finally crests over the towering high-north mountains, Aesa’s snowstorm no longer protecting this valley, I finally understand. The realization hits me like a star exploding, even as I fight my sister to the death—that I no longer fight with my own will in my veins.
But that something in this place commands us—and we are its pawns, in an ancient and deadly game…