A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,5

bricks. The room was empty but for a large, obsidian table engraved with a peering eye.

A creature sat at the table, fork and knife in hand. Zar nearly gagged; he had never seen a creature so grotesque. It looked like an obese, naked man, its folds of pale skin hiding its features—a creature like a great slab of melting butter. It seemed to have no eyes, only two slits. Two white folds opened to reveal a raw, red mouth and a wet tongue.

Zar wanted to stab the creature. He wanted to turn and flee. He wanted to close his eyes, curl up, and pray. Yet he stood frozen in disgust and terror as the creature raised its hand. Its fingers were fat as bread rolls, pale and glistening and ending with small claws. It pointed at a staircase behind the table; the stairs seemed to rise to a second story.

"Do I…" Zar's voice cracked, and he swallowed and tried again. "Do I climb? Is the key upstairs?"

The obese, pale creature said nothing, only kept pointing at the staircase. Its wrinkled slits stared at Zar like eyes. Its mouth opened again, revealing small sharp teeth.

Zar took a step toward the stairs, keeping one eye on the creature. Sword trembling in his thin hands, he began to climb. The stairs corkscrewed up, craggy under his bare feet, until they emerged into the second floor of the tower.

Zar felt himself blanch. He raised his shaking sword.

"Shine your light on me, Sun God," he whispered.

Fight it, he thought and clenched his jaw. Kill it or your body too will fall from the tower.

The second story looked much like the first, round and rough and empty. A creature lurked here too. At first Zar thought it a dog with two heads. But this canine creature was larger than a dog—closer in size to a horse—and its two heads were humanlike, bloated and staring with beady eyes. The two mouths opened and tongues unrolled, each a foot long and oozing.

"Stand back!" Zar said and sliced the air, blade whistling. He had been a soldier once. He had languished in Solina's dungeon for long moons, maybe for years, and his limbs were thin and shaking now, and his head spun. But the old soldier still whispered inside him, the soldier who had swung his blade in battle, fighting the weredragons in the tunnels of their northern lair. He could still wield a sword, and he could still kill.

As his blade swung, one of the creature's heads growled—a deep sound like thunder. The second head screeched—a sound like ripping skin. The dog bared sharp teeth, its muscles rippled, and it leaped toward him.

Zar screamed and swung his blade.

For the Sun God. For my wife. For my son.

His blade slammed into the creature's shoulder. Black blood spurted and clung to the steel, and Zar screamed again. The blood raced up the blade like a black, sticky demon. When it reached his hand, it drove into his flesh, and Zar realized: This was no black blood but a swarm of ants. The insects burrowed into his hand. He saw them crawling under the skin of his arm, racing to his chest.

His sword clanged against the floor.

The canine creature yowled. Its mouths opened wide. Its tongues reached out, red serpents, growing longer and longer. Zar stumbled back, and the tongues caught him, wrapped around him, and began to constrict him.

"Sun God!" he shouted. "Blessed be your light! Bless—"

A tongue twisted around his throat, squeezed him, and his voice died.

Blackness began spreading across his eyes. He fell to his knees, and the tongues pulled him closer, and teeth shone, and eyes blazed, and Zar wept.

The blackness overcame him, and he fell into a deep, endless void.

In the night, he walked through tunnels in a cold, northern land. His brothers walked behind him and fire roared ahead. The weredragons—shapeshifters of the north—filled the underground, and they knew these caves, they knew every tunnel and every bend, and they cut Zar's brothers down at every turn. Their blades thrust from shadows, and his brothers fell, and blood sluiced their feet, and everywhere he turned, he saw their pale skin and shining eyes. Zar wanted to flee, to find his way back into the light of the world, to let the heat of the Sun God warm him, yet more Tiran soldiers surged behind him, and his queen screamed for death and glory, and Zar kept moving deeper into darkness. Finally a weredragon all in