by Stacy Reid
“Drac?” he heard elder Eldrud question him sharply the same time Tehdra arrived in a whirlwind of churning chakra and rage.
Drac…. Pain and impending death filled Saieke's moan. He lowered the psychic leash fully and bathed himself in the pure unadulterated need for destruction that bled into his mind.
Wait for me, please, I beg you…do not die.
Tehdra stumbled to a stop into the hall and inhaled harshly at the feelings emanating from Drac. She did not even get a chance to alert him to the attack, yet he was leaking unrelenting anger from his chakra. She stepped back as black scales rippled over his body and coated it entirely like a second skin. Dark and massive wings sprouted from his back and ripped his shirts to pieces. Malevolence swirled in deep yellow serpentine eyes. He disappeared, and Tehdra moved with all the speed and strength that she could muster from her beast and tried to follow.
Great wings flapped, and he shot through the sky with a speed she could not hope to follow. She took comfort and deep satisfaction from the knowledge that he was heading in the direction of Chedra and the princess.
Please Chedra, Cullen hold on.
18
Pain clawed and dominated Saieke’s body. She did not know if Cullen and Chedra lived. The claws embedded deep inside of Saieke ripped and sliced at her insides. She felt as though she looked through a prism at the Darkan that had her pinned on his claws.
"He has arrived," a close by voice hissed.
She was flung, and her body bounced and rolled to land a few feet from Cullen. Hot blood poured from her stomach and wetted her caftan. She pressed her hand to her abdomen and tried to sit up. Agony was alive inside her. A vicious snarl of rage echoed in the forest. She lolled her head weakly to the side. Tzar. She let out a ragged sob when she saw him. He was too late. She was dying, and she could not feel any energy from Cullen or Chedra.
Less than five minutes had passed since they discovered the Mevians in the cave, yet utter destruction had been left in their wake. Saieke flinched from the tortured sound that ripped from Tzar's throat when he saw his mate and son. He threw back his head, and his roar echoed for miles. He lunged as he and the Darkan came together with ferocity.
The Darkan referred to as elder Macklin stood with a cruel curve to his lips and lazily observed the battle. The three Mevians were casually observing it as well. She heard snarls and roars and saw trees falling, but, though they were killing each other less than fifty feet from her, she could not make them out at all.
She whimpered and tried to crawl towards Cullen. She still had her vial around her neck, and if she could save even one of them, she would do it. She dragged herself while keeping the enemies in her vision. With every breath she took, pain lanced through her and pinpricks of light dance behind her eyes.
Saieke paused when the elder’s lazy look disappeared, and rage flared in his face. A Darkan head rolled and stopped at his feet. Her stomach heaved. Tzar was bleeding from several deep gouges, but he looked feral. He roared and lunged towards the elder. Saieke blinked in disbelief as the elder stood where he was and calmly waited for Tzar's arrival to backhand him. The elder's strength was of such that Tzar flew more than three hundred feet before he twisted in the air and landed on his feet like a cat. The elder made a step forward and paused.
Saieke stilled when she felt the all-consuming rage that suddenly appeared.
Drac
Viciousness and bloodlust bled from him. At the center of it, she felt a coldness that leaped out and slid against her mind. She grasped eagerly at the connection and recoiled. Unadulterated cruelty and evil pervaded her mind. She pulled her mind from his quickly and heaved in the aftermath of such feelings.
Saieke whimpered as the elder’s chakra pulsed out, and his skin bulged and stretched. Hideous rage and wickedness spilled from him as his chakra swirled. His skin contracted, and Saieke screamed weakly as something leaped from his skin and manifested beside him. She had never seen such a creature outside of their books. A hydra: It was over ten feet tall with a serpentine body and seven heads. It stood on four feet while its heads undulated, snapping in pure power and rage. The seven heads’ eyes were pitiless. The elder’s claws had extended, and his face had the shape and cast of a hydra. He also seemed much bigger and more vicious. His tongue forked out, and fangs dropped down.
Saieke, his voice was a rough, distorted timbre she had never heard before.
She swiveled her head to look at Drac. Black scales covered his entire body. His face was fully covered in scales and slicked over his head. His serpentine eyes had no heat in them. There was only an unfathomable void that glowed yellow with flecks of red.
She ran her eyes over him in morbid fascination. He had five claws curved like blades on his hands. Scales covered his feet and claws sprouted from where his nails should be. Muscles that had been sleek before now bulged and contracted, and massive wings sprouted from his back. They spanned more than seven feet and were a weapon themselves. The edges were sharpened blades with several jutted edges meant for impaling. A tail ran from his back and curved deadly at his feet.
Saieke…
Dread danced up her spine.
There was a rush of wind and energy, and Tehdra appeared and rushed to Cullen.
Saieke whimpered and crawled over to them, trusting Drac to ensure that she came to no further harm. There was a low melodious laughter from the Mevians that vibrated through her battered body. They sped towards Tehdra and Cullen.
Drac simply appeared between them.
Wings uncoiled with speed, and he impaled one of them with its sharp edges through the Mevian’s throat. Blood spewed; he gurgled, thrashed and then slid lifelessly to the ground. Massive clawed hands reached out and lifted the other and flung him high and far. Saieke moaned weakly when the hydra lunged and disappeared in the direction Drac had flung the Mevian. Teeth chomped, and it devoured the Mevian.
The other Mevian started to flash away but was stopped as Drac’s tail reached out and speared him in the shoulder. He opened his mouth and released a scream of destruction. The ground shook, and Saieke rolled with it toward Cullen and Chedra. The sound abruptly choked off, and she turned to see him limply lying impaled on Drac's tail.
“Help me,” she rasped out to Tehdra.
Tehdra glanced at her with very pain-filled eyes.
“I can help him,” Saieke whispered. She gasped in raw anguish as she was lifted and shiktred away. She was placed gently on the ground, still in the jungle but some miles away from Drac and the elder.
“How can you help?” Tehdra growled.
She turned slightly as Tzar appeared beside her in a rustle of wind with Chedra and Cullen in his arms. His face ravaged by pain and despair.
Saieke raised her hands and pulled the necklace with the vial from her neck. There was only enough for two. She sobbed and spilled some of her elixir down Cullen’s throat that Tehdra held open. She then switched to Chedra and poured the remainder down her throat. Her hand trembled, and exhausted and weak from pain Saieke slid into oblivion.
Coldness swept through Drac. They had harmed his princess, and even now he could not feel her through their lei.
All who brought her harm must die…we will hunt and annihilate them all.
He was surprised at the calm promise from his beast. He had always believed further harm to the princess would have him once again fighting for dominion. Was it because he had acknowledged she was theirs? Would it be the same if she was killed?
His skull almost splintered from the rage that wrapped around his will and tested the bonds of his dominion.
No…his demon was only calm because she lived.
The elder crouched, and Drac tracked his movements. He was a traitor to their king and people. The law said the council should judge him.
He has touched what is ours…only death.
And Drac accorded.
The elder’s beast, a fearsome hydra, screamed its challenge. Drac could not hope to take the elder alive fo
r interrogation. He would not succumb. The beast inside the elder would sing in triumph if pain were to be inflicted on him. The hydra would love any torture Drac dealt.
Drac snarled as the elder and summoned beast barreled at him with speed. He rushed forward and met their blows. His claws swiped and cut slashed deep into the elder’s chest. The elder had slammed his poisonous claws into him and raked down with the intention to gut him. The scales that covered his body acted like armor, but the blow took him several feet off the ground and flung him backward.
He snapped his wings open and shot into the air in time to dodge the attack from the hydra that had come up under his flank. He spun in the air and shot down with speed, his claws opened and came together at the hydra. His claws ripped, and two of the hydra's heads came off. He plummeted down, then came up with claws swinging under the belly of the beast. The hydra met him with snapping heads that uncoiled and bit deeply into his hand.
The razor-sharp teeth crunched through bones. Drac roared and slashed with his other clawed hand to be met with the other heads that uncoiled around the body to protect it. Pain raked at his wings as the elder came behind him and tried to rip them off his back. Drac unsnapped his wings and the sharp edges and spikes sliced, and his tail lashed up and impaled the elder from behind.
He flexed his wings, throwing him off, propelling himself back sharply. Heads roiled, and the hydra rushed at him with a speed that he almost could not track. Drac launched himself into the air as heads spewed deadly venom in unison. He pushed down with his great wings and shot further into the sky, landing on a large branch of a tree that stood more than two hundred feet above the ground.
Drac perched, serpentine eyes glowing as he watched the hydra and elder below. Pain coiled through his hand where the beast had crushed bones with its teeth, and his blood ran in rivulets dripping to the earth. Chakra snaked around him in churning blackness. Evil reared as his darkness absorbed the pain he was feeling and luxuriated in it. He felt the vile menace that leaked from the elder and his beast and Drac’s chakra contracted to meet it.
Instead of five heads undulating from the hydra there now stood nine. For each head he sliced off, two grew in its place. Drac’s beast howled inside as its rage grew and its need to destroy and kill consumed them both. His psychic barrier collapsed as he summoned his beast to corporeal form. His skin stretched, and the tattoo slid sinuously along his body, and a clawed foot stepped off his skin, then a head, and in a final stretch, the beast fully came alive and leaped from his skin.
The Dracan that appeared stretched and roared. It was a black massive winged creature that stood twelve feet tall. It reeked of unremitting cruelty. His eyes were yellow with flecks of black in them and resembled those of a snake. His fangs were razor sharp and protruded more than a foot. Sharp claws jutted from its forehead and ridged all along his back to encompass his tail.
The creatures that surrounded the forest for miles shrieked and then became eerily silent as they departed rather than face the manifested malevolence. Beast regarded beast as dracan and hydra faced each other down.
The Dracan roared in triumph at being summoned to corporeal form for the first time in years. It looked at the hydra and the need to consume and destroy unfurled inside of it.
“Kill,” its hiss slid across Drac’s mind.
“Kill,” he said in agreement.
The Dracan flew at the hydra and met a gush of poison that arched for more than a hundred feet in all directions with a belch of dark fire. The air snapped, sizzling as the heat of its fire incinerated the venom.
The hydra shrieked as massive wings dove and claws ripped off several heads in savage brutality. Heads sprang back instantly, and now more than twenty heads snapped and writhed. The dracan landed, and the beasts assessed each other with cunning.
They could not kill each other. It was only the host that could die as the chakra that controlled them resided in the Darkans. They could defeat each other, and then the beast would return to its tattooed form on the Darkan to be summoned again almost instantaneously unless the host was dead or too weak.
Drac assessed the elder. He would not put him in chains nor would he be given a trial. Blood dripped from his stomach and poured from his throat and shoulder where Drac's claws had slashed deep, and his wings had impaled him. There was a deep throb in the underside of Drac’s wings where the elder had scored deep with his venom tinged claws.
At least one hundred heads now roiled and writhed, defending and protecting the body with its poisonous spew. Drac knew his beast was not even winded. A part of it played with the hydra cruelly, reveling in the fact that it was summoned.
“End it,” Drac commanded. “Our princess needs us.”
“Yessss”
There was a scream of rage and satisfaction as his beast rushed at the hydra. Giant claws and wings synchronized in slicing and ripping heads from the body. A spew of black flames shot from the dracan's mouth and engulfed the hydra in the fire. The hydra snarled in agony when the black flames touched the many wounds left from its severed heads.
It barreled toward the dracan, which spun in the air, picked up the hydra with its claws and flung it high. Before the hydra could land, the dracan repeated the motion over and over while attacking. Wings and claws sliced and shredded, while black flames ate at it relentlessly.
Blood rained from the sky as the dracan released and attacked the hydra, over and over, without respite. The horrendous howls that came from the hydra were deafening. Drac’s beast landed with a triumphant snarl as the hydra disappeared in a pulse of chakra and contracted back onto the elder’s skin. Before he could think to draw on reserves of chakra to re-summon his beast, Drac attacked with ruthlessness.
He used both hands to punch at the elder’s chest with the intention of ripping him apart. The elder shiktred and reappeared behind him. Drac shot into the air, grabbing his head from above. His wings beat the air as he rose at a dizzying speed.
The elder snarled and tried to loosen the hold Drac’s claws had on his neck. His beast roared and leaped off the ground to meet him in the air. Drac twisted his claws together at the same time his beast opened massive jaws and rent the elder’s body in two.
Dark, vicious satisfaction bled into both their minds at their kill. In a pulse of dark swirling chakra, the dracan disappeared and the tattoo reformed on Drac’s back as he swiftly rebuilt the psychic barrier. He landed as his king arrived with Lachlan and Talon.
19
Wailing that signaled sorrow and devastation echoed through Saieke’s body and made her tremble. Her mind struggled to understand the sound she was hearing and what it could mean.
She floated in a state of semi-consciousness, unable to grasp any sense of time in the overwhelming darkness that was strangely comforting.
Drac, she delved into the abyss and sought comfort along the path he had ripped through earlier. She whispered his name and warmth like a gentle breeze filtered back to her.
“Drac?” she questioned, confused. The pure warmth and tenderness she sensed felt alien coming from him.
“Rest.” His voice enveloped her in a dark caress that soothed her as nothing else could.
The voice was his alone, and the emotions that rushed from him made her smile inside and relaxed. The pain-filled keening was a distant sound that hovered at her consciousness. She strained to understand where it was coming from and fought the darkness that kept her captive. There was a pain deep in her stomach. She held herself still as she remembered all that had happened. The discomfort was deep, but it was not severe, it lessened with each passing moment. She searched along her energy path to assess her injuries and paused. They were not as bad as they were when the Darkan had ripped through her with his claws.
“Am I dead?” Her lips curled as amusement slid across her mind. “I am definitely not with the living world. Instead of rage and snarls, I am getting amusement,” she thought affectionately to him.
The impression of laughter flitted
across her mind.
“This is unfair, Drac,” she said. “It is not right that only when I am dead is when I can make you laugh.
You are not dead, and I am not laughing,” he returned with no inflection.
“I felt it. And if I am not dead, then what?”
“You are recovering from your attack. I failed you, my leika, and it will not happen again. Never when you need me, will I not be there.”
Saieke let his words sink in. Pleasure rushed through her. “You did not fail me,” she whispered. “You came. And what does leika mean?”
He did not contradict her. But she felt a deadly and implacable resolve inside of him when he had spoken.
“My mate.”
She smiled inside. A part of her was beginning to like the phrase. “Are you claiming me?”
Cold silence.
“I was so terrified,” she said. “Cullen and Chedra…”
“They are safe, and you are all being guarded.”
“My pain lessens with every passing moment. How is this possible without the elixir?”
There was a long pause before he slid against her mind.
“Not only has your hearing and vision changed, so has your physiology. You now heal at the same rate that I do.”
“So, I am becoming a Darkan.”
She felt that deep amusement again. “No. From what I could glean from our tomes and scrolls, you should only adopt some characteristics. It is impossible for you to become a Darkan as you have no beast. It may take us a while to figure out what is happening, and until we do, it must be a well-guarded secret.”
