Dragons of Destiny Read online

  “And what do we have here, Brom?”

  “Looks to me like he was about to have his way with her, Korac.”

  “Can’t have that now, can we Brom?”

  “Can’t say that we can, Korac.”

  “Get off of her. Now.”

  Brenan cursed and shoved Evaline’s face, grinding it into the floor as he climbed awkwardly off her. Unsteadily, he stood up and pulled forth his dagger, confronting the two strangers.

  Evaline wiped the tears from her eyes and turned her head slowly, trying to see who had interrupted just in time. From her angle on the floor, she couldn’t see past Brenan and get a look at them. She scooted herself away as far as she could until her back touched the wall. From there, she got her first look at the two men who had for all intents and purposes just saved her.

  They were both tall, standing a head span even over Brenan. They both wore ornately black plated armor that held a glowing blue crystal in the center of their breastplates. One was young, perhaps into his late twenties. His face might have been handsome once, but it was liberally covered with scars, which gave him a decidedly villainous appearance. He had shocking green hair, done up in an elaborate braid that was pulled over his right shoulder. The other man was hidden behind a helm that looked like the skull of some kind of nightmarish creature.

  “Who are you?” Brenan demanded of them, his voice thick with drink.

  The man with the green braid smirked, which pulled his network of scars tight and made them stand out.

  “I’d say that bit of information isn’t necessary, wouldn’t you, Korac?”

  The man in the helm nodded, cackling wryly. The sound made the hair on the back of Evaline’s neck stand up.

  “Let’s just say that me and my associate here represent Dantron’s upper echelon. Our employers have decided that your princess there is to come with us and be our… guest of honor, so to speak.”

  “This little cunt belongs to me! You can’t have her and that’s final!” Brenan roared.

  Brom, the green haired man, shot a sardonic look at Korac, and the two of them casually advanced on Lord Brenan. Brenan snarled and stepped drunkenly forward, swiping wildly at the pair with his exposed blade. Almost contemptuously, Brom grabbed Brenan’s wrist and disarmed him of the dagger, tossing it away. Korac wasted no time. He grabbed Brenan by his collar and head-butted him so viciously that Evaline saw Brenan spit out shattered fragments of his teeth as he collapsed onto his knees, clutching at his ruined mouth. Neither Brom nor Korac spared him a second glance as they sauntered to where Evaline sat curled up against the wall.

  Her shock wore off long enough for her to realize that she was more than half naked in front of two men she had never met before in all her life. Mortified, she did her best to cover herself, but her legs were completely exposed and her ample bosom was nearly popping out of her torn blouse. Brom gazed down at her and frowned. He looked around slightly and strode to a blanket sized tapestry on the wall and ripped it off. When he returned, he handed it to Evaline.

  “Here, use this to cover yourself.”

  She did so gratefully.

  “You have to come with us now,” Brom said not unkindly. He extended a gauntleted hand to help her to her feet.

  “I guess I don’t really have a choice, do I?” she sniffled, her voice shaky. Her hair was disheveled, and her makeup smeared her face.

  “Smart girl,” Korac replied through the jaws of his helm.

  Evaline hesitated only a moment before holding out a trembling hand. Brom gripped it firmly, yet gently and hoisted her to her feet.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked in a small voice, not quite able to look at Brom’s scarred features.

  “Lord Dregan,” was his only reply.

  Evaline’s eyes bulged and her mouth went dry. A spasm of fear shook her to the very core of her being.

  Lord Dregan! Oh Jenukai, no!

  Her legs didn’t want to cooperate as Brom guided her by the arm down the hallway. The two men flanked her as they strode past a whimpering Brenan, who was still bent over with his hands clutching at his broken face. When they were a couple of feet past the Lord, she blinked and licked her lips, trying to draw moisture back into her mouth. She shocked herself by what she asked next.

  “Are you just going to leave him there?”

  “What would you have me do with him otherwise?” Brom asked.

  Forgetting for a moment that she was to be a captive of the world’s most feared tyrant, Evaline stared at the man who had molested her since she was a little girl, and a cold fury that she had kept suppressed for over a decade welled up inside of her.

  “Kill him.”

  “You want us to kill him?”

  “Yes. And… And make sure that he suffers.”

  The two men studied her a moment before Korac replied.

  “We can do that, can‘t we, Brom?”

  “I believe we can, Korac. You might want to stand back a bit though, little princess.”

  The blue crystals on their breastplates began to pulsate vibrantly, and it seemed like the men had become almost transparent. Suddenly the crystals blazed, and from the light stepped forth a mirror image of themselves. The twins that had been born from the crystals were more solid than the original Brom and Korac, who still appeared misty to Evaline‘s eyes. Without warning, the twins that had been conjured reared back their heads and began to cry out in agony. As they screamed, they quickly began to grow and morph into some sort of ghastly monster. The creatures were made up entirely of spikes, claws and fangs.

  Evaline covered her mouth to hold in her own horrified yelp. By the time the metamorphosis was complete, two massive demon-like creatures knelt in front of Brom and Korac, whom looked solid once again. Brom winked at Evaline.

  “Dinner, boys.”

  At that the two demons howled and launched themselves onto Lord Brenan. They feasted on his flesh while Evaline watched on with a sense of morbid satisfaction.

  Chapter 15

  Kania Amitka, Second Voice to Dara of the Circle of Seven, Watcher and Architect of Jenukai City (who also happened to be her mother-in-law), stifled a yawn behind her hand and resisted a strong urge to roll her eyes. She tapped her foot impatiently while waiting for the Circle of Seven to convene.

  The spell required to transport her and Dara to the Magiverse was taking forever! That was where the Circle of Seven met in a kind of in-between reality. The spell to get them there was extremely time consuming, apparently, and Kania had never been the most patient of people when there were things to be learned.

  This would be her very first time entering the Magiverse, and her excitement had her near to bursting with unchecked anticipation. She had studied the Magiverse extensively; well, the theory of it, anyway. Reading every works on the subject she could lay her hands on was a poor substitute in her mind for actually going there.

  Kania always strove to know everything as quickly as possible, and she very much preferred a hands on approach when it came to her education. To her, theory was all well and good, but she would not be sated by theory.

  This is taking forever!

  Succumbing to the urge, she rolled her eyes and ground her teeth as the minutes dragged by.

  Kania was newly appointed to her position, and she had thought that her new life would be filled with adventure and excitement beyond her wildest imagination. As it turned out, not so much. Slowly yet surely, Kania was beginning to realize the life of a politician was predominantly about waiting. A prime example of her new station was Dara‘s instruction to sit patiently while the spell took its course.

  There she sat in the Architect’s study, which resided within Jenukai Fortress itself. The entire first floor of the colossal structure was the seat of the local government in Jenukai City. The Elders, the nobles, and the Gardeners all conducted their business here in the Baehadahn. More importantly, Dara, who was Jenukai City’s representative of the all-powerful Circle of Seven, ruled the city fro
m these very chambers.

  As usual, Akaris Jadestar stood directly behind his mistress. He was her bodyguard and ubiquitous shadow. The man acted as if he expected an assassination attempt even here. His mask hid his features, but his body language was like that of a coiled spring. He was always like that, ready to burst in any direction should his mistress require his protection.

  As a scholar, Kania would have done anything to get her hands on the Mask of Divinity that Akaris wore. She had read all about the Blood Reign, but yet again she found that knowledge would be bolstered a hundred fold if she could just lay her hands on that mask for an hour and truly study the thing. Of course, that was impossible. If she removed the mask from Akaris, he would be dead within minutes.

  In an attempt to quell her brooding impatience, Kania mentally reviewed everything she did know about the Circle of Seven’s body guards. Seeing as though she would herself have one someday in the not too distant future, she thought it prudent to keep herself fresh of the mind on the topic.

  The Blood Reign were all nobly born. Two boys were chosen from among their houses at the age of ten. Brothers or first cousins were chosen if it could be helped. The boys’ lives would be brutally demanding over the subsequent years while they were trained. From the second that their training started, they would spend every single moment together, no exceptions made. Simple things like swordplay, hand-to-hand combat training, living off the land, and an expansive education in the Seven Callings were required of them. The training was considered to be severe, and the boys were to be tested rigorously daily. Considering their charges, Kania found it to be more than apropos.

  It was common knowledge that the boys would be given a dragon egg upon their first day in training and were to care for it until the day it hatched. Their trainers in the sword were Ghost Lords. Ghost Lords were masters that were revered by all swordsmen and matched by none. The Ghost Lords would bequeath Relic Blades to the Blood Reign upon completion of their training. Besides training them in the sword, their Ghost Lord masters constantly would try to destroy the egg before it hatched, and the trainees were to protect the egg at all costs, even slaying their masters if necessary. If the egg were to be destroyed, then the boys had to kill themselves without hesitation by driving their own swords into their stomachs. If that ever happened, two new candidates from the bloodline would be selected to replace them.

  If the trainees did manage to protect the egg long enough to the point where it hatched, it would be up to them to raise the dragon until it was at the peak age to Link with. Only one man can Link with a Dragon, so the pair would be forced to fight to the death for the right to Link with the Dragon and take their place as Blood Reign to the Circle of Seven.

  The ultimate prize given to the victorious pupil would be a Mask of Divinity. The masks provide extra physical attributes to its owner like strength, stamina, speed and agility. They also grant the Blood Reign a hybrid magic of all Seven Callings, like what is wielded by the Circle of Seven.

  Kania was snapped from her thoughts when Dara’s eyes sprung open suddenly. They began glowing a gold that fluctuated rapidly. The Architect was settled with her legs crossed underneath her on a priceless Athenrian area rug in the middle of the chambers. She chanted from The Book of Seven the spell that would spirit them away to a plain of reality that, according to the texts Kania had read, existed in between worlds. She liked to think of it as a hallway between rooms.

  The Magiverse had been created when the Zedd’Kaul had come to this world. All the books agreed that a gateway between dimensions had opened when the alien Casters had fled to this realm. The Magiverse wasn’t where they came from, but was more like the staging ground to get between here and there. Dara had once explained to her that the Magiverse was supposed to have disappeared once the Witch Kings had come through, but the magic was so strong in this world that it could not dissipate. It fed off the magic of this world and grew stronger all the time. Some theorists believed other worlds, including where the Zedd’Kaul came from, could be reached by using the Magiverse, but so far no one had been brave enough to try. If not for her status, she would never have been able to access the Magiverse, so she was grateful for the opportunity.

  That didn’t mean the promotion she had received didn’t have its drawbacks. As Second Voice, she was a direct understudy of Dara and would succeed the Architect when she passed away. The Link that bound the Circle of Seven to each other aged the leaders of the Gaelarian Alliance dramatically, lowering their life expectancy drastically as a result. Typically, magically empowered humans lived sometimes as long as five centuries. The life expectancy of the Circle of Seven, however, was calculated at around fifteen to twenty years after joining the Link, something Kania did not relish dwelling on.

  The Circle of Seven were the most powerfully magical human beings within their respected crafts. In fact, they were so advanced in their Callings that they had actually evolved into a being that was made up entirely of that magic.

  All seven magics that existed in the world had been used to create the Circle of Seven. The Adimus Aura, Casting, Elemancy, Healing, Prophetic and Kallian made up the powerful hybrid energy that had kept Lord Rathe and his Dantronian horde at bay the last decade. Even vile Duncar was represented within the Link, which was a secret no one but the Circle of Seven and the seven Second Voices knew about.

  Dara’s indiscernible recitation had become boisterous, and Kania sat up expectantly, eager for the spell to complete itself. Kania wondered not for the first time what language it was that Dara Chanted in. She knew practically every dialect there was to know, and yet she couldn’t place the vernacular used within The Circle of Seven’s Chanting. The vociferous incantation subsided, and Dara went back to an almost incomprehensible muttering. Nonplussed, Kania sat back again and resumed her foot tapping. She was content to lose herself in thought once more.

  As a Caster, Kania was always keenly interested in all forms of Chant, as it was a central device to her Calling. When the Casters from The Guilds set out to seek new Casters from the general populace, Chant was the very first thing they tested you on. All Casters had the talent for Chant imprinted onto their brain somehow. It was almost like it was a part of their genealogy. Kania could remember when the missionaries from the Deity Watchers, her home guild, had sought her out back in Petra when she was no older than four years old.

  “So this is the girl?” the stranger asked her mother.

  Kania’s mother beamed down at her with her slightly crooked smile.

  “This is my little angel, Elder.”

  “And what be your name, child?” Elder Quiswai catechized.

  “I do be Kania, elder,” she had squeaked nervously, clutching at her mother’s skirts.

  “And how old do you be, girl?”

  “This many, elder,” was Kania’s coy reply, holding up four fingers.

  The Elder missionary smiled a leathery and warm smile at her. With his bit of sparse white hair that clung to his wrinkled brow, he looked nothing more than a wizened old grandfather. His clergyman suit was the dullest gray, and his amiable grin turned and fixed itself on Kania.

  “I have heard some remarkable things about you, my dear. Your mother here and your neighbors have told me all about your many miracles. You may not know it, but you be quite famous in your quaint little district here in our capitol. Did you know, my dear, that we have been speaking to each other in a language that has been dead for over a thousand years all this time?”

  Kania looked excitedly to her mother, who was smiling radiantly at her, tears of joy running down her plump cheeks.

  From there her life had been a blur of achievement. Quiswai had discovered a, “treasure trove” in Kania, as he liked to call it. She had left Petra with the aging missionary two days after that meeting and became a Deity Watcher, the most prominent guild out of all the dozens of Casting houses.

  From the moment she had been enrolled in the guild hall, she had shined. The commodious libraries
of the guild became her home, and multitude of texts of Chant they contained became her friends. Only a scant few could conjure magic while reading Chant, and it turned out Kania was one of those rare few. By the time she had reached her twelfth year, she had become the Deity Watchers Chief Librarian, which put her in charge of every tome the guild hall possessed.

  That just so happened to be the year that the Duncar Moon had crushed her home city. Kania could remember being completely grief stricken, waiting anxiously for any word that her mother might have possibly survived the catastrophe. Three of the longest, most gut wrenching weeks of her life passed before a letter came telling her that her mother had passed away in the attack.

  Kania had been so busy that she had never seen her mother again after Quiswai had collected her. They had corresponded via letter, of course, but that was not the same in Kania’s mind as really getting to know her as a daughter. Her mother had never been able to actually see how smart and successful that she had become. Even worse, she had never had a chance to say goodbye.

  To this day, Kania thanked Quiswai and the guilds Elders for bestowing the title of Chief Librarian on her and in turn keeping her focused. She thought for certain that without her studies she would have withered away from the crushing heartache that followed in those bleak months.

  In fact, that had been the driving force for all of Kania’s successes in life. A single minded and unyielding determination to succeed encompassed her, and she had never looked back. She was so goal-oriented that sometimes it shocked her that she had managed to find love and get married. Landran was the love of her life and her best friend. She could remember the first time she had set eyes on him.

  The year before, Jenukai himself had come out of hibernation only a few days after the attack on Petra. The talk on every tongue in all the world was that war was on the horizon, war the likes that had never been seen. Jenukai did not hesitate once he had emerged from his slumber. He immediately sent his two Emperor Dragons, who were his voices while he slept, to summon to him the original Circle of Seven and to demand their fealty. Even the seven strongest alive in their Callings came to him without delay to pay homage to the Dragon God.