by Tia Wylder
She ran forward and picked up Apollo’s dagger. One of the other Dragonslayers hurled a ceramic pot filled with flaming liquid at Sebastian. It exploded across his skin and he fell from the sky. His body crashed into the face of the mansion. Windows shattered as the entire corner of the home collapsed into rubble.
Ragnar came to his aid with another hurricane of ice. Apollo was caught in the blast. Cecilia ran towards his frozen form as the Dragonslayers approached Sebastian. He was clearly wounded and in need of help, but if Apollo broke free from the ice, he could potentially kill Ragnar with a single arrow if he shot true.
The ice around Apollo cracked. Ragnar flew to Sebastian’s aid just as the other four Dragonslayers leapt onto him. With swords and spears they plunged their weapons into his side. Blood spilled from his body as Ragnar breathed ice across the four warriors, freezing them in place.
Apollo broke free of his ice and readied an arrow. Cecilia approached from behind and raised the dagger above her head. Apollo pulled back the arrow.
“Today you die, dragon!” He shouted.
Ragnar turned to look at him. Cecilia drove the dagger down into his back, right between the shoulders. The arrow fired askew and missed its target. Apollo fell to his knees and desperately tried to reach the dagger as blood flowed from the wound.
Cecilia ran away as Ragnar blasted ice over Apollo. He was frozen solid, his face locked in a state of fear. Ragnar raised one of his scaled feet and brought it down on top of the frozen Dragonslayer. He shattered like glass into a thousand crimson crystals. Almost immediately after his demise, the other four Dragonslayers who were frozen also shattered. Sebastian had transformed back into his human form.
Ragnar shifted back as well. They approached Sebastian, but it was clear he wasn’t going to survive.
“You fought well, Ragnar,” he said, gripping the gushing wound in his side.
“As did you, Sebastian. I wish our first meeting was not like this.”
“You must protect her. You entered into this fight, now you must live with the consequences.”
Ragnar nodded. “No harm will ever come to her.”
Sebastian nodded. “Good.”
He took one final breath before his eyes became like glass and his head fell limp. Ragnar took Cecilia into his arms. She was confused and terrified. Lucius approached and stood silently watching over Sebastian’s body.
“You must take her and go,” he said.
Cecilia looked up at her father. “Why must we leave?”
“Ragnar has slayed some of the most powerful Dragonslayers ever to have lived, but one of our own was also killed in the fray. The other members of our tribe will not take kindly to these events. They will say that he brought them here. Ragnar, you’ve earned my respect and my blessing. Take care of my daughter and see that she lives a long and happy life. Should she bear a shifter, I expect to see him when things have quieted down.”
Cecilia wiped the tears from her eyes and smiled. “Or her, it could be a girl, you know.”
Lucius smiled. “Yes or her; now go, the others will be here soon.”
Cecilia hugged her father tight. Ragnar transformed into his dragon form and she climbed onto his back.
“Just start flying; we’ll go someplace where no one knows our names. We’ll start over.”
Ragnar shot up into the sky with Cecilia on his back. After so much suffering and hardship, they both had found hope in each other.
RIGHT BEFORE EACH BOOK TITLE:
The Alien Dragon’s Mate
By Jocelyn Bride
Chapter One
Dorian Khalthrak
There are stories that parents tell their children to help them fall asleep, and then there are stories born solely to give them nightmares. The World Eaters were the second kind of story when I was young. Everyone knew the tales, but no one talked about their looming threat. They turned a blind eye until it was too late.
When the World Eaters came, they devoured the skies that the Khalthrak clan had flown across or countless eons. Parasitic creatures fell from their bodies like insects and tainted the holy ground of my family’s ancestral land. Collectively, we referred to them as the Old Ones, but the World Eaters were by far the worst of them all.
I had spent the first quarter of my life trying to convince the elders of the threat they posed, but all of it led to me, Dorian Khalthrak, backed into a corner with naught but my father’s sword to help me take my final stand.
The Old Ones clawed at the stone doors leading into my bedchamber. Their black claws and gnashing teeth merely served as tools for the World Eaters to have their fill. These creatures did not think, did not hunger, and did not love. They were soulless abominations, bred only to spread chaos and darkness.
The ancient wards that held those doors together started to wane. I saw the flashes of colored light as each seal came crashing down. My hands tightened around the sword’s hilt as I heard my father’s voice in my head.
“This blade, my son, was forged in the heart of a dying star, just before it exploded and tore itself asunder. Its power is immeasurable, and now it is yours.”
A burning fire danced across the immaculate metal surface of the blade as the last of the wards fell. The door crumbled and gave way to a gushing wave of monstrosities. Their bodies were like oil in water. They shifted and slinked as if time held no meaning to them. Only their glowing yellow eyes and jagged fangs remained visible as they approached.
I was the last of my kind. Soon my world would fall like so many others to the World Eaters. Even so, I would fight until my dying breath.
With a raging battle cry I charged into their ranks. The brilliant flames of the sword cut through the uncertain bodies of the old ones. I heard their unholy screams as the flames evaporated their form. I watched their eyes go out like candles in the wind, one by one.
They continued to flood into the room. My sword swung true, cleaving through countless Old Ones with each dedicated swing. As they got closer and their numbers grew, I felt their cold influence upon my skin. I heard them whispering doubts into my ear. As their stories foretold, they spoke a language that only belonged to the tongues of the dead and those who came before. It was a language as dark and chaotic as their physical forms.
My muscles ached, and still the servants of the World Eaters would not wane. As I felt hundreds of their hands on my skin, I took my final swing through them. The ones that I killed were immediately replaced tenfold.
The sword flashed with a brilliant light. I watched the Old Ones all around me sail backward in every direction. I shut my eyes as it flashed again, and again. A great and powerful heat built up inside the blade. I felt it searing my skin, burning away my physical form. The final flash ripped through the Old Ones with the fury of a dying star, but in the process it also tore my body apart in its holy fire.
I should have perished in that moment, but I did not. The members of the Khalthrak clan all carried dragon’s blood within them. Many would go their entire lives without ever being able to realize their true form, but my father told me that the dragon’s heart within me was strong. He told me that I was a great warrior, like him and his father. Though he never lived to see it, my father was right.
When the light faded, the sword was gone, as was my ancestral home. I stood on the scorched ground, no longer inhabiting the body of a man, but wielding the form of a dragon. Crimson scales covered me from head to toe. The remnants of my family’s great kingdom was laid out before me, and I towered over it all in my true form.
I felt the star’s broken heart inside of me. I felt its purifying fire raging like an inferno in my chest. I turned my head to the sky and saw them. The World Eaters were pale serpents that spanned unfathomable distances. Their mouths were filled, not with teeth, but with black holes that devoured all that came near, even light itself. Their hunger was insatiable, their power was impossible to conceive.
The Khalthrak clan had stories of them, but to bear witness was to gaze
upon the true face of evil. I watched as the very stars themselves seemed to slip into their gaping maw. The stories never spoke of anyone who could kill a World Eater soon that would change. They would tell stories about this moment.
I threw my wings down with a roaring gust of wind and shot upward towards the infinite serpents in the sky. I stayed beneath it, steering clear of the creature’s mouth. If light could not escape, then the wings of a dragon wouldn’t either. I rose higher and higher, until the remnants of my world were beneath me. I hovered above the back of the World Eater and looked in either direction. Its body stretched far into the stars and its head was turning down towards the surface of my world.
Soon it would devour the very land my clan had fought to protect for countless eons. It would unceremoniously gorge upon the flesh and bones of an entire world before moving on as if it never existed. The combined strength of my entire clan built up within me like a raging inferno. I felt the sword’s power within me as I turned my head down toward the putrid body of the World Eater beneath me, and unleashed a burning light.
Pure and scorching light rushed out from my open mouth and cut into the beast. I turned and directed the beam as I flew towards its head. I watched the flesh rip beneath me as the beast came apart. As I reached its head, I saw its gaping maw turning toward me. Its body was crumbling, but the mouth was still intact.
I looked directly into the creature’s jaws and saw the purest form of darkness. An absolute absence of any color or light. Even the light that rushed forth from my jaws was twisted and pulled into its depths. My wings thrashed through the thin air around me, but I still felt the overwhelming pull of the black hole that resided within its jaws.
To cross that line, even as the beast was slowly dying, would spell certain doom for me. Despite my struggles, I descended towards that endless darkness. There was a part of me that always worried about the World Eaters coming to destroy us. This moment had been the subject of many nightmares for me as a child.
From within the black hole, I saw light beginning to emerge. The World Eater’s body had been torn apart by my attack. The black hole was destabilizing, that brief glimpse of light was enough for me to find renewed strength. I turned and pushed myself to fly as far away as possible. There was a powerful release of energy as the beast fell. A rushing wave swept into me, throwing me off course and out beyond the skies of my planet. I was cast into the vacuum of space, send adrift by the explosion.
The impact of the shock wave shattered several bones in my side and twisted my wings until they were mangled beyond recognition. Out there, in that endless sea of blackness, I drift listlessly through the stars.
As the ashes of the World Eater fell onto the fractured sphere that was once my home. At least I could take solace in the knowledge that my world was never fully devoured. My heart sank in my chest as I saw two, three, then four World Eaters emerge from the space behind my planet. They punched through the fabric of the stars like fish jumping from the rippling surface of an ocean.
They immediately dove downward towards the planet’s surface. I closed my eyes as I drifted further and further into the space beyond my world. I didn’t wish to watch those final moments. As a dragon, I can survive in space without air, water, or food. The only thing a dragon needs is the light of a burning star. Those fires would sustain me, but as I looked around, I saw only darkness in every direction.
The sun that fed our planet for countless eons was naught but a tiny sphere of fire. Its light was distant. With my bones shattered and my wings damaged, I could do nothing but let the currents of the stars carry me where they may. I would eventually reach a new world, and my bones would heal once I passed a star and absorbed its light.
In the meantime, I would drift into darkness and solidarity. I only had my thoughts and the sight of my world’s end to keep me company. The World Eaters wouldn’t stop with my world, they will keep devouring until all the stars are snuffed out and the planets of the universe are crumbled into dust. Their destruction would be total and absolute. I had to warn the creatures of the universe. I wasn’t sure if the World Eaters could be stopped, but it was the hope that I would eventually find allies to aid me in war against them, that perhaps another world may yet be spared.
Chapter Two
Harley Carter
There was a night, when I was eight, that changed me forever. I was just a kid with normal nightmares and fears. I was afraid to cross the street alone. I was convinced that there was a monster in my closet, and one under the bed. They were in cahoots, or at least, that’s what I believed.
The truth? The truth was a lot scarier. I lived the first eight years of my life in blissful ignorance. That night, I caught a brief glimpse of what laid beyond our immediate reality. Not just a glimpse either, what came through into our world that night was intent on killing me.
People have often asked me to describe what I saw. I don’t have words to describe it, I honestly don’t think any language does. It was a shadow given form, a creature of pure despair, hatred, and darkness. It had no face, and yet it had eyes to see. It had no definite shape, and yet I saw its body twist and turn into horrific forms.
My fingers paused and I stared at my laptop’s screen. My eyes scanned the page. This was the first time I had told this story to anyone but a shrink. It was a memory that I hated digging up. It was bloated and rotten, never meant to see the light of day again.
My blog, “The Truth is Out There,” is one of the top 100 blogs of its kind, and it has a lot of fans. I grew up seeing doctors and therapists after that night. My parents thought I had gone insane, and they did everything they could to suppress that night’s memory. No one believed my story, not until I went to my first meeting of the Truth Seekers. They were a group of like-minded individuals who invited anyone with knowledge of the worlds beyond our own to come and share their stories.
They believed me, every word. They inspired me to quit my job at twenty-three and start my blog. Soon the website was making enough money that I could devote all of my time to it. As it took off and rose the ranks of the internet, more and more people begged me to tell my story. I always declined, even my About Me page said that I wouldn’t discuss what brought me into this life.
Today I was breaking that promise to myself. I had a draft of that night written down. I kept looking over my shoulder as I sat hunched over my computer. I expected that thing to come back again. This time, it would finish the job.
When the story was finished, I hovered my mouse over the “Publish” button. Once I clicked that, everything would change. My truth, my moment when I knew this wasn’t all there was, would be revealed to the world. Was I ready?
“No, not yet,” I whispered.
I closed the laptop and switched on the lamp beside me. Tomorrow was the first ever Truth Seekers Con. It was being organized at the border of Area 51 in the Nevada desert. Crossing that line would get you in hot water with the government, but it made for a great tagline: Located One Step From the Truth!
It’s no secret that the Truth Seekers inspired me to become a crusader like them. They asked me to be their main speaker at the event, and I accepted graciously. I was going to publish the new post tonight as a surprise before the event, but I couldn’t push myself to do it. Maybe I would tell them tomorrow. Public speaking wasn’t my forte, but if this story was going to get told, it was now or never.
I climbed beneath the sheets of my hotel room bed just after I turned the A/C down to a ludicrous temperature. I liked it cold, and if I wasn’t paying the power bill, I took advantage of the situation. With the temperature low and the sheets warming me up, a drifted into a peaceful sleep.
I didn’t dream that night, which was for the best. I was still on edge the next morning when I woke up. I felt ridiculous as a grown woman staring down the closet in her hotel room, but that kind of fear doesn’t leave you when you realize that there was a monster in your closet, and probably under your bed as well.
I took my
shower, packed up, and checked out of the hotel. The sun was beating down on the stretch of highway that I drove through the Nevada desert. My old clunker of a car sputtered and bounced down the sandy road. I saw a parked group of RVs and cars with faded paint from sitting out in the sun.
There were canopies set up around the area and a stage with a podium built on the far side of the convention. I parked near the group and climbed out of my car. With my laptop in hand, and a backpack slung over my shoulder, I approached the people gathering within the circle of parked vehicles.
Even with sunglasses on, and a wide brimmed hat, people recognized me immediately.
“Harley’s here!” they shouted.
I had a swarm of fans surrounding me within seconds. They sat waiting for me to say something, anything.
“Hey everyone,” was all I could muster.
I looked down at the laptop in my hand.
“I’ve decided that today, during my presentation, I’ll tell my story,” I said.
This was met with a hushed silence. Several people had their jaws agape in shock. A few people surrounding me gasped audibly.
“So, look forward to that,” I said.
I stepped toward the edge of the circle as all the fans started talking at once. I couldn’t make out any of their questions through the noise.
“Alright, let Harley breathe people!” a voice shouted.
I immediately recognized it. It was Greg, the leader of the Truth Seekers. He was a portly fellow, probably twice my age. He came running over in khaki shorts and a t-shirt with the Truth Seekers logo on it. He took the baseball cap off his balding head and used it to shoo the crowd of fans.
