Chapter 5 #2
The same as before, the voice came from somewhere in my chest. I stared at my shadow and waited for it to move again. I must have lost my mind—first dragons, then voices, and now shuddering shadows.
“Skip the speech, let’s get this over with,” the king screamed.
That was how he always was, waiting for the next shoe to drop, and hurrying it along if it took too much time or effort.
He gave me a few minutes to agree to hand the throne to Deldren.
A few minutes to decide the fate of the whole of Eltria, and look what it had turned into?
Deldren shook. I had to save him.
Think, think, think!
One guard ripped my mother up by her hair and unceremoniously marched her to the block. She screamed when they shoved her down against the wood, shifting and crying. Her weeping carried across the roar of the crowd, grating against me.
She tried to struggle and fight, but they shoved her down until she gasped for air. When she kicked, they slammed her head against the ebony wood until it bled, and only then did she stop thrashing.
Hrothgir’s voice echoed among the blur of jittery spectators. “Sentenced to death for treachery and adultery. Collusion against the throne. Your actions destroyed the barrier that protects us all, and we find you guilty.”
I couldn’t look, but the wet sound of crunching bone came regardless, along with the cheers. Celebration.
They didn’t bother to read out her name. I hated my mother. Despised her, and yet I didn’t wish this on her.
My nails dug through the tulle and into my flesh, fresh red weeping across the fabric. I tried not to look at her lone head and the pool of fresh blood. My stomach heaved, and the bile that burned my throat came up until I retched onto the stone.
My heart pounded so loudly I almost didn’t hear the distant screams, like thunder rolling across the horizon. What was that?
I scanned the sky, but found bottomless blue, betraying nothing out of the ordinary. Not a single gray cloud marred the perfect day. No dragons, no flashing silver anywhere as far as I could see. Yet somehow, the tightness in my chest only increased.
The cold sound of my mother’s body being dragged away sent a chill down my spine that no amount of sunlight could wash away. Nothing could wash this stain from my soul.
I had to save Deldren. There was no other way. I racked my brain until the loosest plan fell into place. When they grab him, I’ll bolt for them, and when they are distracted, he can flee. They’ll cut me down, but he’ll get away, just as it should have always been.
“Deldren,” I whispered. But before I can finish, he’s grabbed by the nape and forced to a stand, crying out.
Not yet. They walk three paces before a screech comes from the clouds. They glanced up at the sky. I joined, searching for any signs of wings, but saw nothing.
I didn’t wait another second, bolting upright. “There are dragons! Run Deldren,” I screeched. But before I made it halfway to him, a hilt whipped across my forehead, knocking me to my knees. Pain bloomed across my face, bright and angry. I didn’t want to scream, but I did.
I couldn’t help it when my voice broke and caught in my throat. “Please, Father, spare him.” I was at his feet, and I would beg forever if it meant he could live a single breath longer.
My father’s response shattered everything I’ve ever known.
“Kill the bastard, hurry up.”
Surely this wasn’t my father. Certainly, he must have been possessed by the demons in the neighboring kingdom. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t slaughter his child in cold blood.
Despite my protests, Hrothgir shoved Deldren to the stump without sympathy.
My brother’s dark hair came undone, matted, and sticking to his skin as he stared at me.
It didn’t matter how long it had been since he was bouncing on my lap, because in that moment, all I saw was small Deldren—my baby brother.
I couldn’t stop the tears. They came no matter how hard I fought. And in my weakness, I averted my eyes.
Hrothgir grunted, and the wet crunching rang out against the raucous cheering.
He didn’t scream or utter a single sound. But I did. I wailed as if they’d sliced my own head off.
I couldn’t save him. I didn’t save him. I screamed, but something louder, more ear-piercing drowned my cry out.
Every hair across my body rose as great shadows drifted across the crowd.
I expected them to take shape, but they didn’t.
When the peasants lifted their heads and began to yell, so did I.
Great winged beasts floated across the horizon, getting bigger as they approached Ilyatria.
“Dragons!” Hrothgir screams, his voice barely audible above the cacophony of noise.
The beasts flooded the city, with innumerable riders on their backs directing the brutal attack. The Ifrei dragon riders. They were real, and crumbling my kingdom in their wake.
The beast roared, and my eardrum throbbed from the screech even as I clutched them. In an instant, the orderly execution became a chaos of fleeing. Hrothgir was one of the first, the axe slipping from his hands as he ran from my brother’s side.
His crimson haloed his poor, unmoving form, dripping down the front of the stone. His mouth hung as open as his lifeless orbs, already glazed over in the pool of blood. It beaded down the front of the stage like a molten candle.
I tried to shut my lids, but the brutal image remained, burned in. I feared it would never leave as long as I lived. But if I didn’t move, that wouldn’t be for long.
The sky transformed into a horrifying show of glimmering scales. A deafening roar and tremble threw me to my knees as a monstrous beast landed beside us. Its silver plates decayed with mottled ooze leaking from beneath the scales. Some hung from him, blowing in the wind like shed snakeskin.
Its size alone was terrifying; nothing those depictions could show properly.
Larger than the top of the bell tower, with jagged teeth like greatswords.
This thing couldn’t eat a man in a single gulp, it could swallow a unit of Ovatar’s paladins.
The claws must have been the size of my legs, large enough that the stone beneath them shattered into nothing.
Its thick tail whipped wildly, throwing a fleeing noble into the stone with a crunch. I thanked Ovatar I wasn’t close enough to be in range. But it inhaled deeply, breathing in until it shouldn’t be able to, and still sucked in further until its chest billowed out unnaturally.
But the release didn’t bring fire—like I'd seen in the hall of horrors— it exhaled a sonnet, the whistle catching on the wind and piercing my ears.
Before its great claws, a rune appeared similar to the one flashing on my hand, but a different character that spiraled in a burning azure.
Then, the sigil began to frost over, cracking the stone where it crept—until it released its pent magic in a blinding explosion.
I jumped to cover my face, but it was too late.
The blast sent ribboned bodies flying and rocks embedding into my cheeks.
I pulled myself to my feet, fighting against the ringing in my ears and the cyclical dizziness.
The ground trembled beneath my feet, rumbling with the landing of more serpents.
Explosions of ice and fire rang out across Ilyatria as I spun to orient myself.
My heart thundered in my ears louder than the beating wings, the chaos, and the roar of dragons.
We’re at war. A brutal, bloody, and unforgiving war. Behind the silver railing that edged the sacrificial platform was a clash of loud fighting, a sea of chaos and blood. Dragon riders jumped from the backs of the beasts, with raised swords and drawn bows, tearing my people to shreds.
My hand lit with searing pain. The same voice emanated from within.
We have come. Kill him.
I knew the words, and they nearly played across my lips. Another foreign intrusion.
My father was cowering in the corner, pinned between the stone wall and the metallic spikes, the dragon’s tail whipping at his feet.
He was lucky to avoid being tossed like a rag.
With nowhere for him to go, I floated to the axe’s side and picked it up.
It was heavy and rough against my bloodied, torn hands, and yet I felt no pain. It was as if I weren’t there at all.
When I walked toward him, my body was not my own; instead, a ghost, far removed from this terrible place. He killed Deldren. The only appropriate price would be his head. Every step was easier than the last, until the final footfall, when I was so close the redness of his bloodshot eyes was clear.
I didn’t raise the axe for the voice inside; I was doing it for me.
I lifted the weapon until it stole the sun’s rays and drove them into my iris painfully. But he didn’t cower. He stepped forward, holding his head high, and opened his mouth.
A lick of blue flames rolled out. He didn’t scream; he bellowed a wind that made me stumble to my knees.
The weapon dropped from my hands and blew back as the blue impetus slipped from his fingers like ink and began to surround him.
It lapped at his feet like a horrifying river but lunged at me with razor-sharp tendrils.
My stomach dropped, and I fought clutching it as I darted backward, trying to grab the weapon.
But the guard’s gilt boot pinned it. Scowling swordsmen encircled me, rapidly closing in with weapons raised and ready.
My father’s guard had come, their golden chest plates shining like bastard sunlight.
My fate was solidifying, my death rising just over the horizon.
I was surrounded, and this was my end.