A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,37

raced. The candles still burned upon the table, casting soft light. She tiptoed toward the bed and stared down at Sharik.

His keys.

They still dangled from his belt, each one longer than her hand. If Mori languished in this prison, one of these keys would open her cell. Holding her breath, Treale reached toward the ring of them.

Sharik snorted and rolled over, burying the keys under his girth.

Treale cursed this dungeon, cursed the gods, cursed every grain of sand in this desert and every brick in this dungeon. She reached around the brute, but he would not stir. She tried to roll him over; he would not wake or move. He kept drooling, and his snores kept rising, and the keys remained trapped.

Finally Treale fell to the floor, closed her eyes, and trembled. She was so weak, so tired; she could barely summon the will to breathe. Her belly ached with hunger. Sharik had never fed her as promised, and she felt too weak to crack open her second pomegranate. Her wounds blazed. Worst of all, the images of the prisoners would not leave her: their anguished eyes, their broken flesh, their seeping blood. Again and again, she saw Mori outside the palace gates, frail and screaming as they beat her.

"I will find you, Mori," she whispered into the darkness. "If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the day after, but I swear to you, I will find you, and I will free you."

She looked up at Sharik again; he had not budged, and his snores rose louder than ever. Treale wanted to try to move him again; with all her strength, perhaps she could roll him onto the floor, but what if he woke and beat her? He would soon roll over on his own, Treale told herself. After all, how comfortable could it be, sleeping on his keys? She had to wait but a moment longer. Maybe two moments. Maybe…

Her eyes closed. Blackness tugged at her. She lay, curled up and shivering, and slumber pulled her into a deep, dark nightmare of mangled bodies and shrieking falcons of steel.

SOLINA

She flew through the night, a phoenix of crackling fire and claws of molten steel. The desert streamed below her. She opened her beak and cawed to the darkness. She was fire. She was gold. She was might. She called to her lord the Sun God, and his glory rose from the eastern dunes to kindle her empire. The sand and clouds burned with his might. She flew through the dawn, a bird of beauty, a light to banish the darkness.

She had brought this fire to Requiem; the weredragons had doused it with their dark magic. She had brought wyverns and acid to their halls; they had fled.

But they cannot fight the nephilim. They cannot flee my long arm. Their halls are fallen; their skulls will be mine.

She had left her men in Irys, her oasis jewel. Today she flew alone. Today was a day of her glory.

I was born for today. You will see my power, Elethor. You will see my light.

The agony rose inside her, twisting like demon claws in her womb. A child had grown there, a life she had created with Elethor. The small light had died; her soul had extinguished with it. In her dreams, he cried to her, her son of golden skin and blue eyes, a paragon of light, a holy son—a gift to the world.

For you, she thought. For you I burn. For you I conquer. They killed you, my son. The weredragons killed you, and I will slaughter them all, and it will not be enough. For you I raise this army; in your memory the nephilim shall rise.

She screamed to the sky, wings showering flame.

The mountain rose before her in the south, an edifice of stone under a yellow sky. It rose taller than the peaks of Amarath Mountains where she had crushed the Weredragon Army. It rose taller than the great mountains of Ranin where she would make love to Elethor in their youth. It rose like her empire, undying, eternally strong.

When she flew closer, she saw that towers, archways, and walls covered the mountain, ancient beyond reckoning, faded into mere hints of their past glory. Steeples, once topped with battlements, now rose crumbling like melted candles. Archways, once gleaming in welcome, now rose craggy like the mouths of caves. Walls, once bright with soldiers and banners, snaked across the mountain like the faded trails of goats.

This had been a great

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