Dragons have awakened, attacking both the Eranoran Bond and Banat Republic. As the rival nations scramble to respond, Heir Imperator Andras Tundaer must lead an invasion of the Isle of Dragons. But with his reputation in tatters and children from both nations held hostage by the dragons, Andras races against time to uncover long-buried secrets and save innocent lives.
Prologue
My children!
Dilongaria, queen of dragons, roared her anguish. Her limbs, weakened from her long sleep, gave out and her torso fell to the stone floor, shaking the cave that she once thought would protect her family during their slumber. She closed her slitted eyes and didn’t want to look upon the nightmare that had greeted her.
All dead!
She roared again, long, mournful, agonized. The multi-colored crystals that made up her tribe’s lair trembled with her roars. She heard them crack. She heard them crash to the cavern floor. She didn’t care. She continued roaring her grief. If she brought the whole mountain down on top of her head, then so be it. It wouldn’t kill her and end her pain, for she was an earth-dragon. She would simply transform into the rocks and soil above her, a process as uncontrollable as her heartbeat, and then reform once she escaped the tomb. For there was no such thing as a tomb for her. Except, perhaps, one of pain.
Her throat turned ragged and her roars disintegrated into groans and sobs.
Then she did the hardest thing she ever had to do in all the eons of her life. She opened her eyes again.
Dozens of shrunken dragon corpses lay within the deep mountain chamber her tribe had called home after the gods retreated to the Core. Their glorious colors were gone, replaced with the gray, desiccated skin of mortal bodies. She could only tell them apart by the shapes of their heads.
At her feet lay Jax, an air-dragon who’d had the most beautiful blue scales of any dragon she’d known in her long life. He’d brought joy to them all when he’d turn clouds into ridiculous shapes.
Next to Jax lay Yan, her water-dragon skull as smooth as a porpoise. Yan could bring the sea to a boil or calm it into gentle lapping at the shore. She loved nothing more than to race beneath the waves among the sea life or dive into the deepest, darkest ocean trenches with nothing but her clicks to guide her.
Past Yan lay a smaller body. Dilongaria choked on a sob. It was Bajh, a fire-dragon. The serpentine corpse of her youngest child was curled into a fetal position as if he’d died in terrible pain. She lumbered across the chamber and stroked his delicate skull with a talon. She remembered how he’d virtually leaped out of his birthing crystals, ready to create new islands or burn away a dead forest so that a new one could grow.
A glint of metal caught her eye, and she looked up to see the body of her eldest son, Harak. His body still retained most of its silvery, metallic scales, but they simply covered her son’s metallic bones like a shroud. He lay near one of the leya crystals, which glowed with an unhealthy purple light. One of his left talons was embedded into the crystal as if he’d struck at it with his dying breath. His right talons held something close to his chest, but Dilongaria could not see what it was.
She crawled slowly toward Harak on her powerful hind legs, her claws digging into the rock as easily as soil. She took care to avoid crawling over her children, for her bulk could crush their remains to dust. She would ensure their bodies entered the Core as intact as possible.
Leya crystal shards were scattered about the lair. She didn’t know if they were the result of cave-ins during their long sleep, her anguished roars, or something else. Regardless, she paid no heed to the crystals she crushed beneath her claws and torso. Her only focus was her oldest son.
She stopped beside Harak’s corpse and gently used her right talon to pry his talon from beneath his chest. She winced at his cracking bones, but she had to see what Harak held. She sensed its importance. Knew it was something for which he’d died.
When at last she pulled Harak’s talon free, she looked upon a ragged and dingy piece of black cloth. Her mind still reeled from her grief and her abrupt awakening, so it took her several moments to remember that humans once wore things like these.
But that was impossible. How could humans have entered her lair? There were no entrances. The only way in was for Dilongaria to tell the earth to allow them entry. Humans couldn’t do that. They were animals. Intelligent animals, yes, but animals without the divine spark of a soul.
She stared at the leya crystal and Harak’s left talon embedded in it. A sickening horror arose from her empty belly, warring with the grief in her heart. The leya crystal should not be glowing purple. It should be a healthy red, like the horizon at sunset. It could only be purple if it were somehow corrupted.
Dragons could not have done this.
Realization struck Dilongaria. It came with explosive white anger, anger she had never felt in the thousands of years since the gods fled to the Core.
She leaped toward the cavern’s crystal ceiling, transforming herself to earth just before her body slammed into it, and then raced up through the granite and rocks as smoothly as Yan—she choked back a sob—had slid through the oceans in her water form. She slid past veins of gold and iron, along with the roots of evergreens that grew along the mountainside. She tasted them all with her senses, a lush diversity of elements that made up this one mountain.
This had always been her favorite moment after she’d awakened from a long sleep. But now, it was gutted with rage. There would be no joy for her while traveling the earth or for the rest of her eternal life.
When she reached the summit, she sprang forth and reformed her body. She landed with a graceful thump that raised clouds of snow around her mountainous bulk. It was night, the full moon shining down upon her with a pale light that was no longer comforting.
She scanned her island from its highest peak. The evergreen and oak forests surrounding it were dark. It was summer down below, for the moonlight glinted off the green leaves of the oak trees. Beyond the trees were hills and grasslands. Her divine sight could pick out the movement of her servants. They had multiplied and thrived on the island during her sleep. At least they had not died.
Her dragon vassals still slept, though, deep within their own caverns. She would have to be strong when she awoke them and told them of her family’s murder.
Dilongaria looked beyond her island and toward the distant horizon in all directions. The continental lands that she remembered on the east and west of her island were still there.
But now, she saw the glow of the leyas rising from the continents like a soft orange mist in the darkness.
She roared again, but this time there was no sorrow in it. There was only rage and hatred.
Sometime during her sleep, they had figured out how to take what was not theirs to take. They had stolen the divine leya energy from her children. They had murdered her children.
If the gods in the Core had not yet punished them, then she would.
This was a sample chapter from my work-in-progress fantasy novel, Dragon Twilight (also a work-in-progress title). If you enjoyed it, please sign up for my newsletter to get updates on the novel’s release. Thank you!