Dragonchild

By Skye Woestehoff

Prologue

He knelt on the cold stone floor beside the aging woman who was slumped against the wall. A manacle ran from her withered wrist to the stone wall above her head. He reached out and took her hand in his own. The chain rattled and the woman opened her eyes. They were sunken into her face and so dull that they hardly seemed to have any life left in them at all.

“Please hold on, please hold on.” he whispered, his voice cracking, but she looked straight past him, never blinking. She could no longer see him or anything in this world, so gone was she in her visions. It is the price of being a seer, they say, to never see the world again.

The woman shivered and her jaw worked soundlessly. She gripped his hand with a strength that was frightening. And then her eyes started to go completely white. A bright white color rolled over her irises, and then her pupils.

“No, no!” he cried. “Please, don’t give them what they want!” But it was too late.

“Move aside, boy.” he was jerked to his feet and thrown back against the wall. His head hit it with a sickening crack and he fell to the floor, sobbing, but conscious.

The robed man looked down on the woman in satisfaction and gave a terrible, twisted smile that only one who has no regard for human life can give. He knelt down by her side. His hands snaked out and grabbed her head viciously and she cried out in pain.

“Yes, yes, that’s it, show me, take me there.” the man said silkily in a cold, heartless voice.

“No!” the boy cried and staggered to his feet. A raw burst of energy hit him in the stomach, and he doubled over, his chest heaving, and his eyes burning with rage.

The woman began to scream, her whole body shaking in mad convulsions, her white eyes staring into nothingness, seeing only her visions. Her cursed, tormented visions. And then she was silent. Mercifully still.

The man began to laugh and released her head. It slumped to her chest. The red jewel he wore at his throat began to glow with a frightening light that colored the entire dungeon cell in a blood-red hue.

“What have you done to her?” the boy screamed, trying desperately to get to his feet.

“You should no longer concern yourself with her. You’ll be seeing her soon.” the man turned to face him, his entire body shaking with pleasure and his eyes terrible and cold inside the shadow his pitch-black hood cast. He knelt down beside the boy and seized his jaw in his hands. “She was a very great gift to us, your mother. She gave us exactly what we wanted.”

“You bastard!” Tears were streaming down his face.

“You think so?” He smiled his cold, terrible smile as he meticulously drew his sword and plunged it through the boy’s heart. His jewel flared blood-red as the boy’s lifeblood flowed out of his body and pooled onto the ground.