Shadow Cursed

Second Age, Year 899

Ghokarian spiraled over the smoking wreckage of a human colony, scanning burnt dwellings and charred bodies. The fire hadn’t just demolished this settlement, it had also killed a dragon.

And when something killed a dragon, it had to be destroyed.

Wintry wind lashed his pale-blue scales. Acrid odors rose from the ruins, and he shut his nostrils against the stench. The only sound was the whistle of air past his leathery wings. That, and the faint cry of some strange animal. Its keening voice rose and fell in odd patterns—piercing at times, low and throaty at others.

Dragons had no interest in human affairs; he only knew this tribe because a former member of his dragonflight had bonded to one of the flesh-covered mortals. She’d perished in the fire that had wiped out the rest of the colony. As the archon of his flight, it was Ghokarian’s duty to cleanse the death-site and investigate the disaster.

He would also decide if retaliation was necessary.

He spotted a large carcass and glided down to land. Lingering warmth from the fire seeped into his paws as he plodded toward the corpse. Lyreth Equilumos lay half-buried in debris. Ash and soot stained her once-green hide.

Far away, the animal’s cries rose in pitch. Ghokarian flattened his ears against his skull, shutting out external stimuli as he examined the deceased.

An alien expression twisted Lyreth’s visage. Ghokarian wasn’t an expert on expressions, for sovereign dragons had no emotions—only when they formed a bond could they come to know such things. Still, he was better informed than most of his kin. As he bent to examine his ex-flightmate, Ghokarian decided hers was not an expression of pain. Her slender brow ridges curved in a shape that he might have described as mournful, if he could have understood what it meant to mourn.

Lyreth looked strangely contorted. Ghokarian peeled back one of her blackened wings to reveal a broken body clutched against her chest. The smaller creature was burnt beyond recognition, but it could only be her bondmate.

He suspected Lyreth had died in vain, trying to save the mortal. The position of the debris indicated she’d barreled into the dwelling after the inferno had compromised its integrity. From a technical standpoint, the death was no one’s fault but her own.

Ghokarian considered his options. His eyes weren’t glowing, which meant the death-site didn’t require cleansing. He could leave now, report his findings to the Eminarchs, and that would be the end of it.

But what had started the fire? Though bonded dragons were weaker than their sovereign counterparts, it would take an unnaturally strong blaze to kill one. Some of Lyreth’s scales had flaked off in the heat, and the flesh beneath had blistered. All her blood had boiled, so there was no need to purge the body . . . yet the boiling point of dragon blood was higher even than silver.

Ghokarian wasn’t able to be curious, but dragons lived by high standards, and he therefore needed to be thorough. Even if the fire hadn’t been intended to kill Lyreth, something so powerful was a threat to his kin.

He turned from the entwined corpses and picked his way through smoldering rubble. Observing the crumbled settlement, he noticed a pattern in the burn marks. The fire had eaten its way outward from a central point somewhere to the north. This told him it had been magic, and it had been deliberate.

The wailing animal grew louder as he marched on. It didn’t sound like anything he’d ever encountered. Perhaps some opportunistic scavenger had arrived, hoping to feast on the dead. There might be a meal amidst the devastation.

Ghokarian passed between a pair of scorched rock arches and stopped. He couldn’t feel horror or shock—he couldn’t even feel interest—but he’d never seen anything quite like the sight before him, and it took a moment to absorb.

He faced a clearing so tightly littered with bodies that he couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. It looked like a black sea had been caught in a tempest and frozen in place. The dark waves that twisted up, as if touched by gale-force winds, were hands and feet and torsos hardened into place by the conflagration. A ring of structures encircled the mass grave, buildings that were now as disfigured as their creators.

Another keening wail drew Ghokarian’s attention to the center of the square. A human child crouched on a granite platform, rocking back and forth. He’d studied the species enough to tell the creature was female, and very young. No more than a hatchling, by draconic measure.

Though she had escaped without burns, congealed blood smeared her face. Long gashes had been gouged horizontally across both her cheekbones and smeared with a tarry substance that had eaten away at her skin. Her mouth stretched wide as she howled.

Unable to avoid stepping on the deceased, Ghokarian crunched through bodies as he approached. At the sound, the child’s head jerked upright. She stopped rocking and quieted. For the first time since he’d arrived at the settlement, silence fell.

The girl stood to face him. She looked malnourished, for he could see the shape of bones beneath her golden-brown flesh. He couldn’t discern the color of her scalp fur—it was plastered to her face and neck, matted with blood and the water that leaked from her vivid red eyes. Most humans he encountered either fled in terror or prostrated themselves in reverence, but not this child. She held his gaze with an unblinking stare.

Though Ghokarian couldn’t be confused, the evidence around him pointed to a conclusion that didn’t make sense. Had he been capable of emoting, his gut would have been writhing. As it was, some deep survival instinct made him stop when he was two winglengths away from the girl.

She stood in the epicenter of the scorch pattern. She was untouched, while her colony and all their belongings had burned. She had the coloring of a fire-wielder. Her cheeks bore the marks humans gave each other to denote great power . . . and great danger.

Even someone half as clever as Ghokarian could see what had happened.

If she’d started the fire intentionally, draconic law decreed that he must eliminate her as a threat. If she’d started the fire by accident, the protocol became more convoluted, but it still ended with her death.

The girl stretched her hands out to him, fingers curling and uncurling in jerky, uneven movements. She started crying again, making high-pitched noises in repeating patterns. Ghokarian, who’d never had reason to interact with lesser species, couldn’t understand a word she said.

He took a few more steps, leaving the tangle of burnt bodies. A radius of clear ground surrounded the girl’s circular platform. Perhaps her people hadn’t dared get too close, or perhaps the power of her spell had liquefied everyone in the near vicinity.

Dragons weren’t cruel—how could they be? Acts of cruelty stemmed from hatred, anger, jealousy, fear. Ghokarian had to destroy her, but he’d do it efficiently. Decapitation would be best. One quick talon-slice through her neck was all it would take. She would never see it coming. There would be no discomfort; just the quiet exhalation of her final breath, then darkness.

Humans were altogether too messy, he decided, as he placed a paw on the edge of the stone dais. Her nose dripped, her crimson eyes leaked—such a waste of vital fluids—and dirt clung to her sweaty, bloodstained body like a thin film of fur. Instead of cowering before his approach, the girl tottered toward him on unsteady limbs.

One did not have to understand fear to understand humans were dangerous—especially a human found lingering at the death-site of a dragon. Ghokarian needed to kill her and be done with it. Just as he raised his right paw to strike, she uttered a word he recognized:

“Arretraté.”

He froze, and not just because the girl had commanded him to stop in Draconic. When she’d spoken, her voice had sung with true power. He tilted his head, reassessing everything he thought he knew about her.

“How do you know my language?” he asked.

“Learn words from Lyreth.”

Ghokarian couldn’t understand any of her reply except for Lyreth, and he assumed she’d picked up some vocabulary from the colony’s resident dragon. Of course, any fool could learn a word and repeat it—but the draconic tongue was infused with the same arcane magic that flowed in his veins and glowed in the core of his soul. Only dragons were able to summon that power simply by speaking. Dragons, and their bondmates. This child was certainly not bonded. She didn’t have the telltale purple eyes.

If she wasn’t a dragon-speaker, then what was she?

“You have committed a crime,” he told the girl, unsure how much she would understand. “Draconic law states that you must be killed, since you killed one of my kin.”

Her eyes widened, but he saw no flicker of comprehension in their depths. More likely she was just impressed by his glittering scales or the thunder of his voice. She even went so far as to creep forward and crouch by his right forepaw, placing a hand on the talon that would have served as her execution weapon.

“I appreciate that humans are intelligent beings,” Ghokarian continued, “so I am doing you the service of explaining my actions. I expect you to submit to your justly deserved fate without resistance.”

The girl ignored him. She mumbled to herself, rocking back and forth on her heels again. She petted his scales with such tender care that it gave him pause. It was hard to reconcile the image of this pitiful figure with the person who’d killed her entire village, plus one dragon. Could he have been wrong? Evidence could be misleading; perhaps he ought to look for more clues before taking a potentially innocent life.

Ghokarian pulled his paw from the girl’s embrace and turned, studying the crime scene. He plodded around the dais, seeking anything that might offer further insight. The child stumbled to her feet. She babbled in her own language, wobbling after him like a duckling.

After two thorough sweeps of the area, Ghokarian couldn’t find a shred of evidence that incriminated anyone besides the child. Then again, he reasoned, the evidence he had found was circumstantial. It wouldn’t be enough to condemn a dragon on trial before the Eminarchs, so it was not enough to condemn this human.

“After further evaluation, I have decided that your guilt cannot be ascertained,” he said, twisting his neck to find her clambering around his hind legs. “Therefore, you are free to go.”

No response from the mortal. She crouched beside one of his back paws to inspect an old wound on his ankle, the fading remnant of a fight with a shadow-demon. The injury had healed, but the pattern of his otherwise perfect scales had been interrupted, leaving a blank patch of skin exposed.

She looked up, caught his gaze with her disarming one, and smiled. Even through the blood and filth, her smile was infectious.

“You may go,” he repeated, shaking his foot to shoo her away. “I must deliver my assessment of this situation to the Eminarchs.”

The girl scampered off. Ghokarian spread his wings once she was clear, stirring up whorls of flaky ash, and tensed to leap into the sky.

A shriek stopped him before he jumped. He glanced back and saw the child returning, holding something in her hands. Could it be evidence? Was it important?

No. It was a rock.

Chattering in her native tongue, she ran to his left hind leg, the one with the old injury. She placed the rock over the puckered stretch of bare skin, but the stone was misshapen, too big to fit. Undeterred, she squeezed the rock in her hands. It began to glow red-hot between her fingers, and she prodded at it with her thumbs, sculpting it.

“Firemagic,” Ghokarian murmured. Incredibly advanced firemagic, at that.

The glow vanished as quickly as it had come. Steam wafted off the rapidly cooling mineral in lazy, curling ribbons. Pleased with her work, the girl placed the rock against Ghokarian’s ankle once more. Now it was shaped like a dragon scale—one that fit perfectly in the place where his was missing.

“Help you,” she said. A frisson of energy ran down Ghokarian’s spine as her words settled in his ears. Power lived within her, that was undeniable. Dangerous power. Draconic power.

He did not want to consider where that power might have come from, because any answer would lead to her death at his claws.

Ghokarian shook her away again, then crouched to get a better look at her. There was something decidedly odd about this human. Odd, and fascinating. He’d never been fascinated by anything before. It was as if a new dimension of time and space was opening up, inviting him inside.

“What is your name?” he asked her.

“What is your name,” she parroted back.

“Ghokarian,” he said, indicating himself.

“Ghokarian,” she echoed, stepping forward to brush his snout with her fingertips. Then she retreated and pointed at her own chest. “Beledine.”

“Beledine,” he whispered. She grinned in delight, clapping her tiny hands.

Ghokarian looked around. Even if he didn’t kill her, she would die if he left her alone in this cemetery. Humans took time raising their offspring, and from what he understood, children were useless until their fifth or sixth year. This child didn’t look that old, and she certainly didn’t look well-fed.

He wavered, torn between actions, immobilized as he weighed his choices. The sensation ran deep, burrowing into his chest. He felt his brow ridges draw together, almost of their own accord.

What was this new phenomenon that seemed to transcend the physical, that seeped through his brainstem to muddle his mind? The feeling was decidedly abnormal.

Then he realized—he was feeling something. He didn’t quite have the word to describe it. The opposite of certainty, perhaps? Mortals had a more succinct term, he remembered: doubt.

This struck him like a blow to the head. If he became too familiar with the human, he ran the risk of absorbing her emotions. And once emotions took root in a dragon’s soul, it was impossible to get rid of them. They were a plague without cure.

The doubt lingered in his chest. He analyzed its effect on his psyche as the child tottered around his forepaws. Should he leave and let her fend for herself, or should he take steps to ensure her survival? If he decided on the latter, he’d have to guard against the possibility of bonding. Surely such a task would be simple; why, after all, would a dragon surrender his sovereignty?

Below, Beledine leaned her cheek against the trunk of his leg and flashed him another enchanting smile. That smile decided him.

So it was that Ghokarian Equilumos, Archon of the Luminous Dragonflight, did not fly out of the decimated human settlement. He left on foot.

And Beledine Arowey followed.