I won?
I won the match! So why does my corefire twist like smoke without ember in my belly as Tally lies so very still and quiet on the stone slab? Death is too easy a game, just the snick of a talon—
“Vanquish the pup,” Father insists, clacking his fangs impatiently. “Finish the rite! What are you waiting for? No other creature in the world will miss a human.”
But I’ll miss him . . . does that make ME a monster, too?
Tally’s not gone. Not yet. But the tiny sliver softly glowing through his heart chamber will slowly, surely burn him alive if I do nothing, and Father—
Simply can’t WAIT for nature to take its course.
“If you don’t slaughter that hunter’s spawn before his blood turns to ash, you will lose the ancestral aura of the Irefiend, forever!” he growls.
I cower out of instinct as his talons slice the air, but their violent slant is not for me this time. Keen claws rake the edge of the slab into a glittering cloud of quartz dust, severing a wisp of hair from Tally’s soft thatch of brown curls. Yet the cut feels deep, and somehow—mine.
“Do you really want to revert to a crippled runtwing and spend the rest of your days groveling in the dirt, my son?” Father demands.
Who’s son?
Razor scales ripple from horn to tail-tip with my sudden rush of fury. Father never counted me among his hatchlings before. But this mortal boy was my first friend! And I want Tally BACK—no matter the cost to make him whole.
“No. There will never be another Irefiend, ever again!” I vow, stretching my wondrous new wings wide as sky will take me.
Snaking my neck forward, I snatch Tally and cradle his stick-thing frame between my fangs. Furling wind underwing, I lunge after an impossible horizon. Somewhere beyond this arena of snow-white spires where dragons and humans have stained the stones with bright red and hot gold blood for half a millennium:
Ire sear bone pyre,
Wake blood fiend from fire,
Revenge tastes sweeter red
When every groundlings’ dead
When the last hunter dies
And dragons bless the skies!
I learned the lilt of that lullaby while still in the egg. Maybe this destiny was always mine, but I bound my friend to it with a lie! And if Tally survives my sly trick of fate, will he ever forgive me?
I wouldn’t.
*
Never trust in sudden kindness from cruel quarters, Tally—
I should’ve known something was wrong when Father cornered me in the far reaches of the cavern for a casual conversation.
As the only hatchling in my egg clutch born with a stunted body and shriveled wings, he’s already tried to kill me five times in one century whenever he randomly notices the disgrace of my existence. Oh, I almost forgot that time he threw me into a bubbling tar pit to test my scale durability. Make that six times. I can’t blame Father for wanting to erase my shame from our dragon clan, though—
I’ve only survived to 113 because I learned to scurry quickly behind stalactites and stalagmites and dive into escape holes I dug myself! I’m also really good at being useful to others . . . .
A proper den wyrm: the convenient class of small beast that can polish treasure hoards to a blinding shimmer, cultivate ponds of slimy moss balls to soften molting scales, and weave the most luxurious vine hammocks for hibernation cycles. But I doubt that Father wants to ask about a comfy hammock . . . will his seventh attempt at slaughter finally reap my life?
“Astrosimus!” Father bellows into the larder cavern where I huddle behind a mountain of fresh trout. “That fish stink can’t hide the smell of my own kinfang. Come out! NOW.”
Does he think that’s my name? I do have a grand draconic title, though mostly, I’m just called “Dennie”—Den Wyrm—dead meat whether I obey or not! I sidle out from the fish pile with my shriveled wings tucked low and tight against my back.
“Atrocienne,” I correct him softly in a daring mumble.
“Atro . . . Attaboy!” Father replies, making the dead fish jump as he thumps his tailspikes on the ground, drawing me closer. “I’ve been looking just for you!”
My worst fear, confirmed. “Please, don’t kill me!” I plead. “Scorchette still needs me to repair at least a half dozen antique brooches in her jewelry chest, and Reaver requested fresh algae flakes—”
Embers fly from Father’s nostrils as he gives a deep chuckle. “Oh son, there’s no need for any of that nonsense anymore. How would you like to be an Irefiend, just like your bold sire? Join all your brothers and sisters of the flame in righteous battle!”
“Me?” I sputter a single, wishful cinder. “But I thought that was impossible since the Great Hunters’ Cull!”
Fifteen years ago, my clan destroyed the last humans descended from the first human to kill a dragon. Irefiends can’t exist anymore. Only a mortal with that original sin still running warm in their blood can spark that exquisite rage in our kind.
“I found one.” Father’s fangs gleam in a triumphant snarl. “No doubt a foundling spirited away from the hunters’ fort before the cull, but the boy’s grown to a strapping youth. Now, his stolen aura glows bright as a second sun. It won’t be long before his presence attracts others of our kind. Of course, I’ll kill the brat before I let a rival clan harvest his gift!”
I tremble as his tail coils around me in a vise-tight grip.
“But why waste such a boon when I can bind it to my own bloodborn?” he muses. “For YOU, my dear Atrobius, are the only child among my clutch not yet marked by the wrath of the Irefiend. And do not all our legends decree that the last to claim that mantle shall be marked the strongest?”
Me, the Strongest? How could I dare to claim such a coveted prize, a flightless runt who’s barely ventured beyond the cavern’s mouth in over one hundred years! Now, Father offers me the ultimate temptation: freedom and strength, and the chance to prove myself worthy, wingtip to talon with all those who’ve scorned every second of my cursed existence—
“Take me to him, Father, and I’ll make you proud,” I vow. “I’ll kill that sinner’s spawn and become the Last Irefiend.”
*
Do you remember how we met, Tally?
I knew you were a monster,
but I felt safe with you even though
you were never once safe with me—
I don the form of a stick-thing before entering the humans’ hamlet. A disgusting necessity, but it’s the only way to hide my presence from other dragon clans and more easily gain the young hunter’s trust. A shapeshifter’s amulet presses against my skin under my tunic as I concentrate on planting two wobbly feet in front of each other without tripping myself.
How do humans balance on such skinny pegs? Somehow, the dusty track I follow towards the village slows into a pilgrimage a thousand miles long! This soft-shelled mortal body is far too feeble—
“Hullo, Little Prince!”
Two burly men emerge from the shadows of the tree line and bar my path forward. No fair, those bodies look mildly durable. But I catch no draconic aura in their scent; these aren’t hunter spawn, but they know too much already—I should KILL them! My small fists clench tight as I dearly miss my talons. “How’d you know I’m the youngest prince in my clan?” I demand.
The two men guffaw as they move closer, a bald brute and a hairy lout circling me like a prey animal.
“With fine threads like such, it’s obvious, Yer Highness,” the bald man sneers. “Don’t you think, Squire Jimmy?”
I suppose my clothes are rather dazzling compared to their muddy rags, woven from shining silk pillaged from a mountain caravan, and set with mother of pearl buttons stripped from the corpse of a knight who died in the Arena of Spires—
“I daresay you’re right, Sir Tom-Lad,” the hairy squire replies. “Cough up your coin, if it pleases the Wee Baby Majesty,” he orders, poking me in the chest with one finger.
I stumble and fall on my backside. How mortifying! Both men’s squinty peepers light up as my amulet slips free of my tunic with a golden gleam.
“And that pretty pendant, too!” Sir Tom-Lad adds.
I dare not risk undoing my disguise so close to the village, so I’ll just have to fight like a dirty HUMAN. I bite the first hand that reaches for the amulet and am rewarded as the bald man screams like a proper little prey—ouch!
What’s with these tiny teefs? Such bitty, blunt ivories are useless in battle! Tears prick my eyes as my arms are wrenched behind my back at an angle not meant for this frail frame. If the amulet’s cord snaps, I’ll turn back into a dragon runt right in the middle of this road. My stealth attack will be utterly ruined—
“All right, boys, that’s enough trouble out of you lot for today!” a cheery voice booms behind me.
Two shadows fly across the sun as my tormentors are tossed thirty feet into the air. My jaw drops as the pair careen over the forest canopy, Squire Jimmy and Sir Tom-Lad’s shrieks of terror ending in a tremendous splash.
Sitting up in the dirt, I turn just as my rescuer cups a hand to his mouth and yells, “Wash your filthy manners off before you DARE set one foot on shore again.”
Sunlight slants over the broad-shouldered silhouette of a boy as he reaches a calloused hand down to me.
"Sorry for the rude welcome to Melarka.” His blue eyes twinkle as merrily as noon sparkles on spring water. “I try to keep the local ruffians in line, but sometimes only a dunk in the lake does the trick.”
“Thank you—” My hand freezes inches from grasping his own as the nearness of his skin sparks a heinous aura that only my kinfang can sense.
My pulse pounds against my temples as bile rises in my throat. This wretch reeks of ancient dragon blood! The same molten river that gushed from the fatal heart wound of the first dragon slain by a human, a treasury of liquid gold that bathed his own murderer in a powerful mantle of energy. The impossible strength that allowed this boy to toss his fellow mortals like puny pests makes perfect sense now—it’s STOLEN.
Cursed hunter’s spawn, I’ve found you!
The boy gasps, and I freeze in primal terror as I wonder if he somehow senses my true dragon form even behind the amulet’s shield. With his brawn, in my current state he could rend me limb from limb like child’s play . . . .
“Where’d you get those pearly buttons?” the boy demands, pulling a leather cord from under his collar and revealing a matching button to my own shiny row.
I gulp with the sudden realization that my father probably killed his fifteen years ago . . . but he must never know that. “Uh, I can’t really say. I inherited this tunic from a distant relative. Very distant.”
“Oh, maybe we’re cousins, then!” he replies with a grin wide enough to split the sun. “This dandy button was found clenched in my hand when I was left in Melarka as a babe. I’m Taliesen, but you can just call me ‘Tally.’ Everyone calls me Tally.”
Sure, cousin. “And I’m—”
“Just ‘Dennie’” curls on the tip of my tongue, the same den wyrm taunt that’s stuck to me for over a century. Not today. Never again! Yet “Atrocienne” is too much of a mouthful to share with lowly mortals, so I clip my true name short—
“Cien,” I reply. “I’m Cien,” I repeat more confidently.
My skin crawls with the sizzle of lightning as Tally pulls me to my feet with one swift tug that nearly wrenches the bones from my shoulder. For just a second, I feel a pure rush of rage! Is this the visceral power of the Irefiend rising inside me? NO! This is not the time or the place to shed my disguise and slaughter my ancestral foe . . . .
“Glad to meet you, Cien! Are you hungry?” Tally asks, oblivious to my inner storm to quell the first savage prick of fury. “The chow bell will ring soon. Why don’t you join me and the other field hands for a fresh berry mash?”
The young hunter confuses me with his easygoing attitude; he’s nothing like the ravening warrior I expected. My mouth waters. Berry mash does sound tempting, and besides, there’s time! Father’s given me one full moon to earn the boy’s trust and lure him to the Arena of Spires. One month to play human and learn all the cunning monster’s weaknesses—
“Berry mash sounds delicious,” I reply, smiling without the least hint of fangs.
Stay tuned for the heart-stopping conclusion of The Last Irefiend next Wednesday!
~*~
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