Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1)
Page 23
"Requiem falls," Elory whispered.
The blood of Requiem spilled across the City of Kings that day. Under the simmering sun, they died. The chariots flew everywhere, plowing into their ranks, and the seraphim thrust their spears, every soldier commanded to slay a soul. The firehorses, demons of sunfire, plowed through the ranks of slaves, hooves of brimstone shattering bones. The chariots rolled over fleeing children, and everywhere the spears lashed. Everywhere the seraphim swung their swords, cutting men, women, children, elders. Everywhere the bodies fell.
Elory ran.
They all ran.
They fled down the streets, hobbled, falling, slamming into one another. Too many of them. Too many. The chains between their legs too short. They fell. They rose, pushed forward, stumbling into alleyways, desperately seeking the city gates. They were too slow. Too many. Too many.
And still the fire rained.
And still the spears lashed.
Blood painted the city, and bodies piled up around temples and statues of silver.
Requiem dies today, Elory thought.
"Elory!" Vale cried, reaching out to her. "Elory!"
"Vale!" she shouted, trying to reach him, but countless slaves separated them, a great maelstrom, flowing through the streets, crashing down.
"Father!" she cried, trying to reach him, but the priest vanished into the crowd. "Vale!"
They ran, stumbling, dying. A spear flew from the sky, impaling a girl before her. Elory ran over the corpse. A chariot swooped down before her, and more Vir Requis fell, and a seraph's lance thrust into an old man.
Elory growled.
If Requiem dies today, then we die fighting.
The old man fell before her, pierced. Elory leaped forth, grabbed the lance's shaft, and tugged back with all her might. The seraph, leaning from his chariot, lost his grip.
With strength gained in the bitumen mines, Elory spun the lance around, thrust, and pierced the seraph's neck.
The soldier couldn't even scream.
Elory yanked back, tearing out his throat, and snarled, a wild animal, lance in hand.
I slew a man. She growled. I will slay more for Requiem.
"Elory!" Vale cried ahead. "Elory, run!"
She ran onward, spear in hand. More chariots charged through the crowd, trampling more slaves. Three seraphim flew above, laughing, children skewered upon their spears. The living ran over the dead. Vale managed to grab a spear too, managed to slay a seraph, but the enemies were too many, their chariots too fast, their lances too swift.
If we could remove our collars, we could rise as dragons, Elory thought, thrusting her spear, running onward. We could hope to live, to defeat them.
But they wore their collars, and they died.
With a handful of spears, crying out to their stars, they died.
And above the carnage, laughing, covered in blood, he flew. The god of light. The god of wrath. The tyrant. The destroyer of Requiem, the bane of slaves. Ishtafel.
"Flee to your holes!" the King of Saraph cried. "Flee to Tofet, slaves! Flee and cower. Any who sets foot in this city again shall die in agony. Flee! Flee and remember my gift of life, and remember my punishment of blood."
It was hours before the people of Requiem managed to flee the city. Myriads died before they limped, bloody and weeping, into the land of Tofet.
That night, the spears rose across Tofet, sixty thousand strong, and upon each spear the seraphim placed the corpse of a slave. The forest of the dead rose across Tofet, a decaying army, a memory of Requiem's blood and Saraph's eternal shame.
MELIORA
She lay in darkness.
She lay in blood.
She lay alone.
Her wings kept beating. Missing. Flaring with pain every movement. Every feather was a dagger. Every flap a sword into her back. Her wings—gone. Still there, phantoms, demons, tugging at her innards. A thousand cuts covered her, the wounds of Ishtafel's spears, but all that pain was as a caress, drowning under the agony that spread out from her back. Two wings woven of pain itself.
"Requiem," she whispered, cheek pressed to the stone floor. "Req . . ."
She tasted ash, rock, copper. She couldn't speak. She couldn't weep. All there was—shadow. All that remained—nothing.
Shadows, dancing.
Fire crackling around her head.
Demons in the dark.
Dragons.
Dragons under constellations, and stars exploding, and skies falling.
Fire. Fire haloing her brow, hallowing her body, coursing through her veins, tiny creatures, burning, rivers of dragonfire inside her. Her sweat dripped from her spine, into her eyes, into her mouth, onto the floor.
She melted. She melted into sweat and blood and tears.
I must live.
She was dead already.
I must live!
Nothing of her remained.
I must . . . I must . . . Requiem. For Requiem. For Elory. For my family. I must . . . live . . .
She flew upon clouds, and her wings beat, and she screamed, she screamed in pain, she screamed and screamed, but her wings were no longer the wings of seraphim. She flew on dragon wings. Leathern. Silver with golden claws, curtains of starlight and dawn.
She flew toward them—the halls of Requiem, woven of the stars themselves, celestial and rising from an astral forest.
The song of harps played on the wind, and her pain melted like the rain, and here was a place of goodness. Of peace. Here was Requiem reborn, the Requiem that had always been, the Requiem that awaited her. That awaited them all.
The halls of eternal rest, she knew. The halls of afterlife, the halls of the endless song of dragons. The song of harps welcomed her home.
Requiem! I found your sky.
She flew between marble columns, a silver dragon so small by their majesty. Beams of light fell between the pillars, illuminating the white trees and marble tiles, and in the distance, silver mountains soared. Meliora kept flying, feeling so light, free of all the weariness of the world, all the pain, all the worry, all the weight. A feather gliding on the wind, at home.
She kept flying between the columns and beams of light, and ahead of her she saw a throne rise in a pale hall. It was not a throne of gold, silver, or ivory like the thrones of Saraph. Here was a chair of twisting branches and roots, carved from an oak, polished and very old. A figure sat on the throne, cloaked in light.
Meliora flew down and landed on the marble tiles, and she shifted back into human form. As she approached the throne, no pain filled her. No more wings grew from her back, but her shoulder blades were healed, and she was whole—a woman like any other of Requiem, her true wings hidden within her. She approached the throne slowly, birch leaves scuttling across the marble tiles beneath her feet.
The figure of light left the throne and stepped toward her. As it stepped closer, the beams of light dispersed, and Meliora saw a king with a grizzled beard and warm brown eyes. No crown rested on his head, and he bore no sword and wore no armor, only green and silver robes, but she knew that he was a great warrior, the greatest in Requiem, the first king of her people.
"Aeternum," she whispered and knelt before him.
He smiled and held out wide callused hands, the hands of a woodsman. She rose, and he took her hands in his.
"I sinned, Aeternum, my king." Tears rolled down her cheeks. "I served Saraph. The blood of that cruel empire flows through my veins."
King Aeternum's smile was warm, his eyes soft. Kind eyes. The kindest, wisest eyes she had ever seen.
"Many of Requiem's greatest lights were not kindled in our land, my child. Queen Laira, my wife, Mother of Requiem, was born to a king in the cruel land of Eteer. Issari Seran, our greatest light, the eye of the Draco constellation, was once a princess of an empire that sought our fall. Queen Gloriae, the great heroine who rebuilt Requiem from ruin, was a child of Osanna, a dark land that toppled our halls. You too are a great heroine of Requiem, child. You are a pure daughter of starlight. T
he magic is yours, and the light of Requiem's stars will forever shine upon you, no less than it shines upon any other son or daughter of dragons. You will never be torn. In Requiem's halls, you are one. You are whole."
Meliora couldn't stop the tears. "But my family is torn. My sister. My brother. My father. The blood of Requiem calls out to me, a people in chains. I could not live in wealth while Requiem suffered. I cannot stay in this light while they still call to me. I can hear them. Even here, I can hear them cry out—for a savior, for mercy, for freedom. For me, Aeternum."
The king's eyes softened, and she saw the pain in her own heart reflected in them. His hands were warm around hers. "There is rest here for the weary. Would you abandon it?"
"I would. I would doom my soul to the Abyss itself, to an eternity of pain, if I could save but a single soul of Requiem. For five hundred years our people have called out for mercy, chained, forgotten. I must save them, my king. I must lead them home. I would give up the light of Requiem itself to deliver my people from darkness."
Aeternum lowered his head, and suddenly the great king—the founder of Requiem, the builder of King's Column, the father of the Vir Requis—knelt before her, and he kissed her hand.
The light blinded her.
She cried out in pain.
The agony dug into her back, and her phantom wings beat, and again she lay in darkness, her face against the hard floor. She drew a ragged breath, and the air sawed at her lungs. Her eyelids fluttered open. She saw shadows, craggy bricks, rusty chains. Her halo no longer cast its golden glow but red, angry light. The light of dragonfire. Meliora reached above her head, expecting to feel the warm softness of her halo. She winced and pulled her fingers back; they were burnt with fire. She felt trapped again in the bronze bull, a sacrifice to Malok.
Once more she lived. Once more she was imprisoned in the ziggurat, this palace where she had once lived in innocence, where she was now entombed.
She thought back to those celestial halls. Had she died and returned to this world, no longer a seraph but a fallen being of fire? Had she merely dreamed? Had she seen a vision of Requiem in its past or the Requiem beyond the stars? Meliora did not know.
But I know this, Requiem. I will fight for you. Always. So long as I can cling to life, I fight for your marble halls, for your great heroes, for all who need your magic. Requiem is hope. Requiem will rise again.
ELORY
It was ten days before the overseers allowed the survivors to bury their dead.
All that night they labored, and the night after that, and a third night too, pulling their dead off the lances like plucking rotten fruit off trees. The vultures cawed angrily, bellies full but still ravenous. No more dragons labored in Tofet; all now wore collars, the Keeper's Key gone. They did not dig graves but burned the dead in great pyres. Sixty thousand stars gone from the sky. Sixty thousand songs silenced.
The living no longer chanted as they worked, no longer sang, no longer looked toward the stars. Something inside them died too. Every Vir Requis lost a soul—brothers, sisters, parents, children. Every Vir Requis knew—a shadow fell that would never be lifted, a sadness that no light could ever cast aside.
So many fallen, Elory thought as the sun rose and set. Each life—a world. Forever gone.
She had lived through years under the yoke, in the bowels of the ziggurat, hungry and afraid and weak, but now for the first time in her life, it seemed that hope faded from Elory, that she could no longer dream of a savior, of a return to a lost home.
Could there ever be hope in a land of such pain, ever be light again in such darkness?
In the pit of bubbling tar, Elory gazed southward, and she could see the Eye of Saraph—the crest of the ziggurat—staring at her, always watching. Somewhere in there, buried deep, she lay—Meliora, her wings severed, perhaps as lost to Elory as all those who lay buried underground.
That night, after the last of their dead burned in the pyres, the people of Requiem lit candles.
They did not light their candles outside for the overseers to see. They did not rally and raise their fires high. They did not march upon the city, shining their lights, singing for freedom. In the land of Tofet, the slaves sat in their clay huts, and they lit their candles on stones tables, and they prayed.
Elory sat in her hut with her father and brother. They sat in silence. Four candles burned on their table: a candle for those who fell in the massacre, a candle for Elory's mother, a candle for the hero Lucem, and a candle for lost Meliora. Four lights, flickering in the breeze, soft and dying, soon to go dark.
She looked at the lights, then up at her father and brother. Haggard faces. Eyes dark.
"We failed," Elory whispered. "We marched for freedom and we lost our fight. Is all hope lost?"
Jaren stared at the candles, then raised his eyes to look at the stars engraved onto the ceiling—the Draco constellation, scratched with fingernails. In the candlelight, they seemed almost to shine. "Not so long as the stars shine," said the old priest, "though we cannot see their light."
Vale, meanwhile—young, angry Vale, lips thinned into a line, fists clenched—stared toward the floor. There, hidden under their straw beds, lay the lances he and Elory had snatched in the battle. The young quarryman kicked more straw over them, hiding the shafts.
"Not so long as we can fight," Vale said. "I don't know if there is hope to escape, to see Requiem again. But there is hope to slay more of our enemies, to shine our own light."
The candles melted, the flames guttering. Outside, across the land, a million candles or more shone their lights in huts. Perhaps that was hope, Elory thought—small, hidden lights even in the shadows.
"We will keep praying," she whispered. "We will keep fighting. And we will keep hope alive." She reached across the table and took her brother's and father's hands. "We will not abandon the dream of our people, and we will not abandon Meliora who languishes in darkness. So long as we can keep candles burning, we will remember Meliora, and we will remember Requiem."
"Remember Requiem," Vale said, face hard, eyes shining with fire.
"Remember Requiem," Jaren whispered.
Holding their hands, Elory prayed, and they whispered the words with her, the most ancient prayer of their people, a prayer for a land lost, for a dream that would always shine.
"As the leaves fall upon our marble tiles, as the breeze rustles the birches beyond our columns, as the sun gilds the mountains above our halls—know, young child of the woods, you are home, you are home."
The story continues in . . .
CROWN OF DRAGONFIRE
Flame of Requiem, Book Two
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AFTERWORD
Thank you for reading Forged in Dragonfire, the first novel in the Flame of Requiem trilogy. I hope you enjoyed the book.
The next Flame of Requiem novel is titled Crown of Dragonfire. Click here to grab your copy or search your favorite ebook store for "Crown of Dragonfire."
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Thank you again, dear reader, and I hope we meet again between the pages of another book.
Daniel
NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON
THE MOTH SAGA
Moth
Empires of Moth
Secrets of Moth
Daughter of Moth
/> Shadows of Moth
Legacy of Moth
REQUIEM
Dawn of Dragons Requiem's Song
Requiem's Hope
Requiem's Prayer
The Complete Trilogy
Song of Dragons Blood of Requiem
Tears of Requiem
Light of Requiem
The Complete Trilogy
Dragonlore A Dawn of Dragonfire
A Day of Dragon Blood
A Night of Dragon Wings
The Complete Trilogy
The Dragon War A Legacy of Light
A Birthright of Blood
A Memory of Fire
The Complete Trilogy
Requiem for Dragons Dragons Lost
Dragons Reborn
Dragons Rising
The Complete Trilogy
Flame of Requiem Forged in Dragonfire
Crown of Dragonfire
Pillars of Dragonfire
The Complete Trilogy
ALIEN HUNTERS
Alien Hunters
Alien Sky
Alien Shadows
OTHER WORLDS
Eye of the Wizard
Wand of the Witch
Firefly Island
The Gods of Dream
Flaming Dove
KEEP IN TOUCH
www.DanielArenson.com
Daniel@DanielArenson.com
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Twitter.com/DanielArenson