Old Dark: The Last Dragon Lord, #1

ACT I

I

ANCESTRAL BOGS, WESTERN CONTINENT, YEAR 1020

The wind whistled around his wings and the stars glittered off his black scales as Dark flapped furiously, pushing a torrent of air toward the ground to cushion him as he touched down on a rickety boardwalk in the middle of his family’s ancestral bog. The boards trembled beneath his weight.

His claws scratched the rotting wood as he stood upright on all fours. The water, like purple velvet wavering in the starlight, seemed to swell upon his presence, sending slow, pulsing ripples downstream. He had prayed just yesterday at the altar of the bone-white mausoleum submerged in brush and shadow in the distance, offering a bloody tribute of heart and lungs to his grandfather in the great beyond, never imagining that it would be the starting point of a hunt today.

Dark folded his wings close to his body until they rubbed against his scales. He reached his long neck down and rubbed his nose against the wood.

He sniffed, taking in the remnants of peat long burned away, decaying fish, flecks of mercury on the water, and the blood and sweat of human slaves one hundred years ago toiling over this bridge. How they had screamed when Dark had struck them down. How they had gasped as the water pulled them under quickly and silently as Dark knelt and prayed.

Intermingled with it all, he sensed something fresh.

Sweat. Gathering in an armpit, pooling on the chest.

Yes, this sweat was recent.

And something else. Cloth. The crude, astringent dye from the northern continent that reminded him of austerity. That telltale smell of all things elven.

He sniffed the edge of the water, dragging up a ragged circle of dead grass on its surface and revealing a murky patch where a black fish darted away in fear.

He lost the scent.

He tracked down the boardwalk with his nose low to the ground. He picked up the scent again about halfway down. It grew stronger the closer he approached the mausoleum, and he moved into a new nebula of scents so powerful he could almost see them wafting among the fog.

He licked the air.

Salt.

The kind that beaded up on the backs of humans’ necks whenever fear was close. But the scent was slight. Whoever was here hadn’t been here long. Perhaps they were overcome with fear at the sight of the mausoleum—his family’s resting ground, a massive, curved tooth that rose into a patch of navy blue sky. It had been designed for that very effect—to show humans and elves what their place was in this world.

The mausoleum was still locked. The thick marble doors hadn’t been disturbed. The coward Dark was chasing was foolish, but not foolish enough to disturb his ancestors’ rest.

The salty smell veered off into the brush, like the arc of a comet leaving celestial dust in its wake. Dark leaned into the sweaty scent until it grew stronger.

He reached grassy, damp ground. His feet sank into the mud, and he immediately realized his mistake.

Dragon tracks in the mud. That wouldn’t do.

He extended his wings and lifted himself effortlessly into the air, high over the broken treetops. In flying he would lose the ability to track the scent, but he would gain the benefit of higher ground.

The benefit of surprise.

As he took to the sky, he couldn’t help think that this would have been a perfect time for a group formation, two dragons flanking him as he charged in front, grinding his teeth to sharpen them for the meal ahead.

You should let us come with you, Norwyn had said.

No. I’ll handle this myself, Dark had replied.

You could be playing into their trap.

You forget who I am, Norwyn.

Very well, My Lord.

Dark’s shoulders tensed as he thought of Norwyn, the thin white dragon who served as his advisor. He was the most cautious dragon Dark had ever known. His recommendation to hunt in a group had been valid. Most of Norwyn’s advice was. In any other circumstance, Dark would have listened, taking a pack with him. And they would have hunted like wolves in the mountains of the northern continent: swift, relentless, victorious.

But this was personal. Whoever was running away in the bog below had tried to poison him.

Dark and his regime had been on their normal route and had descended upon an elven village, demanding all their magical goods as part of their monthly tribute. A little elven girl had offered them a dead deer carcass, and Dark had almost sunk his teeth into it when the body glowed.

Fyrldr, a red dragon, was less cautious. He tore into the deer offered to him, and magical venom seeped through his body, killing the dragon in a slow, writhing death. Dark hadn’t been surprised in a long time—very little surprised a dragon lord—but he couldn’t believe his eyes as Fyrldr convulsed at his feet.

Then he’d heard a metallic clink of metal and frantic footsteps behind him.

Dark lashed out with his tail instinctively and slashed the elven assailant, drawing blood. The man ran, and before Dark could chase him, the villagers mounted an attack and the man disappeared in a sea of people.

Dark left nothing of that village.

He couldn’t let such a blatant attack go unpunished. It could not be known that he, the great Dragon Lord, Dark the Wicked, had almost been poisoned like his parents before him.

This coward running through the bog needed to be ripped apart, if only to teach the rest of the world that its lord was invincible.

A faint glimmer crisscrossed through the trees. Dark almost missed it, but it floated horizontally in the vertical patch of birches, against the grain of nature.

Dark knew that glint. He recognized it from all the wars that he’d been in, flying over the battlefields as his dragons fought humans and elves.

It was a sword hilt. The sword was bouncing up and down in the hand of someone running, making jagged metal cracks against the undergrowth.

Above, a cloud slid away and revealed the moon.

Dark spread his wings and dove toward the glint.

His wings sliced the treetops, and the branches were like knives against his scales. But he pushed harder into the dive and came upon the running man.

Dark swung to the left and around the man, and with a snap of his wings he about-faced and hovered in the air, blocking the moon. He let himself fall, shaking the ground with a tremendous boom.

The man wore a bandana over his mouth and dark green shorts. He lay on his back, flabbergasted as Dark stepped toward him slowly. He was shirtless, with a cursive rune tattoo across his chest. One of his pointed ears was tinged with blood from where Dark had struck him.

Dark growled, blowing a thin cloud of smoke from his nostrils into the elven man’s face. Then he grinned.

Good evening, he said.

The man placed a trembling hand on the hilt of his sword, but Dark slashed it out of his hand with his claws. The impact broke the bones in the man’s hand, and the crunch reverberated throughout the bog.

The man screamed.

Is this what I have to do to get respect? Dark said, resting his claw on the man’s chest with just enough force as to not break any more bones. You tried to kill me.

The wounded man nodded, his chest heaving up and down.

You magicked a deer carcass, Dark said. I’ve never seen that before. How did you concoct the spell?

The man struggled under the weight of Dark’s claw, but a pained smirk crept across his pale face.

We forged it out of the hatred you’ve created in this world, the man said. He spit in the dragon’s eye. My family is going to finish what we started. Just like we did to your parents.

His parents.

This was worse than Dark thought. He had assumed the assassination attempt an isolated incident. There had been many. But this man wasn’t acting alone. This felt organized. If a family was involved, there was a plot.

More than a plot.

A conspiracy.

His blood curdled at the thought.

Oh, so it’s a family affair, Dark said.

He dug his claw into the man’s chest and drew out a line of blood.

Tell me, my brave elven coward, what is your family name?

I’ll never tell you.

And so you’ll disgrace them in death? Dark asked. Don’t I have a right to know so that I may unburden them from their troubles?

You’ll know soon enough, the man said.

Dark dug his claw deeper and the man screamed.

Where shall I bury them? Dark asked. I think the bog would be a fitting place. But don’t worry yourself with that. No, my son, we must first decide what I’m going to do with you.

Dark clutched the man in his claws and stomped to a nearby pond. He held the man’s head over the water.

Should you drown? No. That would be far too weak a punishment. It would make me look ineffectual. Can you imagine what my dragons would say? They’ll say, ‘My Lord, of all the possible ways you could have crushed this elven boy, you let him drown?’ And what will I say in my defense? Nothing! I’ll look soft …We can’t have that, not in light of your little scheme. At a time like this, it is important to look strong, stronger than ever before. One must have strength that seems to come from the heavens!

Dark slammed the man to the ground and pinned him by the neck with his tail.

There’s a meal that’s worth making from you, the dragon said, laughing. I could call it coward soup. Grind you up and feed your bones to the desolate, hungry children in another elven village.

My bones will give them strength, the man said.

Wouldn’t that be gruesome? Dark asked, ignoring him. But they’ll say, ‘My Lord, that was far too cruel. Now the elven villagers will rise up again, though they have no food in their stomachs, and the humans in their pastures will hate you, and they’ll kill their dumb cows just so you can’t have them,’ and so on … My advisors, I mean. I can’t seem to do anything in this world without considering the political consequences. It’s a downside to being the dragon lord.

Suddenly, Dark stopped speaking and took the man’s arm in his mouth. With a quick, ragged motion, he ripped it off. Blood spilled down his lips as the elven man lay in a bloody pool.

Dark licked at the blood and let out a sigh.

The taste energized him, made him delightful with rage. The hot blood rolled across his tongue and he roared, reveling in the sound of wilderness and strength and revenge and closeness to the earth.

He tore into the man’s chest and mauled him, ripping out chunks of flesh and flinging them in every direction. He dug into the body until his claws reached soil, crushing the man’s bones in his vicious rampage.

Finally, nothing was left of the body but the man’s head. The eyes rolled upward and the mouth was frozen in an expression that looked like the beginning of a curse.

I’ll not pray over you, Dark said. And then fear struck him, his heart swelling in his chest as he thought about the gravity of the assassination attempt.

Assassins were nothing new. He had dealt with many of them. But never a conspiracy, and never someone clever enough to trick him with strange magic. This conspiracy would strike again, and he had no idea where or when it would come.

He had the strong urge to talk to his father. The old dragon would know what to do. He always did in situations like this.

A dull gold sparkle in the dirt caught his eye.

It was a golden, winged bracelet. It must have been around the man’s wrist. He picked it up. A rune was etched into it. Dark recognized it from the western continent, but couldn’t decipher what it meant. Elves were skilled metalworkers—he needed to remember that.

He tilted his head at the dead man and grinned.

I’ll uncover your plans soon enough.

He took the bracelet and the dead man’s head in his claws and flew away.

II

Dark’s family palace was built from rock and bone, and it stood in the middle of a valley ringed by mountains. His mother had dragged rocks from rivers and coasts into the valley, fashioning them into towers; his father had brought magic down from his mountain aquifer and used it to hollow out the rocks into a space where they could live. The bone, which glistened smoothly here and there amidst the rock, was from their opponents.

As Dark approached from the sky, he marveled at the palace’s architecture. The grounds mirrored the world map, with five towers that converged to look like a sleeping dragon. The garden on the west wing resembled the family’s ancestral bog from above, a kidney-shaped pool between the towers of rock and bone.

Dark had not lived his whole life in the palace. He and his parents were from the bogs, but he had quickly learned to appreciate the perks of opulence.

Below, a wave of flames flickered in the dead grass of the valley—candles and their waxy signatures.

People. An entire flood of them. Humans. Some elves.

News of the assassination attempt would have spread across the region by now, and this crowd was the first of many who would come to prove their loyalty.

As it should have been.

The crowd sang, and their voices echoed through the valley.

Smile for us, old dragon lord,

For the world may soon stop spinning.

Shadow’s flame is you, old lord,

And this dead world needs your kindling.

Dark grinned. There was nothing like hearing his own poetry from the lips of the weak.

For how many years had they sung his praises?

Over two hundred, he thought, but when you were a dragon as old as he was—one who had seen one thousand and five hundred springs—the years blended together. He had lived so long that they called him Old Dark.

Dark roared, and the wave of flames blinked.

The people were kneeling.

The wind was in his favor. He spread his wings so that the air billowed against them, and he drifted downward toward the palace.

The vigil stretched for half a mile, two thousand people with carts of gold, coins, jewelry, and cows so plump they could hardly walk.

Dragons flew around the area. They towered over the crowd with ten-foot wingspans, breathing smoke from their nostrils. They grabbed the cows with their claws and carried them over the palace gates to the slaughter tower. The cows’ lowing was almost louder than the chanting.

Other dragons grabbed the carts of gold and hauled them toward the palace gates, where a long, serpentine dragon was counting the treasure, piece by piece. The dragon nodded to Dark.

Dark nodded back. He flew in low, his wings nearly scratching the heads of the people. He heard whimpers as he passed, the sound of humans on their best behavior. Then he crested into the sky and said as loudly as he could: Your tribute is noted, my children. Give me but one more prayer, and then return to your villages and enjoy the rest of your evening.

The crowd started another song as Dark steered for the palace.

Norwyn was waiting for him when he landed on the western tower. He was Dark’s advisor, born on the same moon as Dark. They had fought in the Magic Wars together.

Norwyn’s family was a band of Keepers that dwelled in the glaciers, protectors of the northern aquifer, an isolated group with a strong sense of right and wrong who kept their riches to themselves, a rare trait in a world where ostentation was everything.

Norwyn was as tall as Dark, but not quite as muscular. He had snow-white scales and eyes like moonstones. His wings, when outstretched, were marked with gradients of blue that reminded Dark of a glacier sliding down a mountain.

Dark rolled the dead assassin’s head across the stone floor, and the white dragon’s eyes widened as it struck his foot. As was his custom, Norwyn stared at the head for several moments before making up his mind. Then his face smoothed into its normal stoic shape.

Looks like I don’t need to ask if the hunt was successful, Norwyn said.

I found him in the bog, Dark said.

The bog? That’s a strange place to flee.

Norwyn kicked the head off the side of the balcony. The bloody visage clearly disturbed him.

More villages will be arriving throughout the night to pay respects, the white dragon said. They’re spooked and afraid of how you’re going to retaliate. I’ve never seen so many cows in my life.

Fine.

Dark didn’t want to think about food. He was thinking about revenge. He passed Norwyn and entered the cool darkness of the palace. Norwyn followed, and they wound through a cavernous tunnel. Torches burned on the walls, crackling slowly and throwing ashes into the air as they passed.

There’s a conspiracy brewing, Norwyn, Dark said.

I figured as much, Norwyn said. That attack was well organized.

Dark remembered the bracelet; he had wrapped it around one of his claws. He stopped, lifted his foot, and then tossed the bracelet to Norwyn.

The white dragon scrutinized the piece of jewelry.

It’s elven, Norwyn said, cocking an eye. This variety of gold is from here on the western continent.

And the rune on the back? Dark asked.

Norwyn turned the bracelet over and studied the rune. The scrawling lines confused him.

This I haven’t seen, My Lord. I’ll look into it.

Thank you. That’s it for now.

No, that’s not it, Norwyn said.

Dark stopped. What happened?

The white dragon chose his words carefully. He started to speak, then paused, considering something.

Dark hated when Norwyn didn’t get to the point. He wondered how he had put up with his diffidence for so long.

Out with it! Dark barked.

Norwyn sighed. The magic they used on that deer carcass—I know where it came from. We found a dead dragon on the eastern continent. A mountain dragon.

No wonder Norwyn had treaded carefully. The thought of dragons dying at the hands of elves angered Dark. His legs shook with rage.

A Keeper? Dark asked.

Norwyn nodded. "Someone tapped into her aquifer and stole magic from it. I don’t know how much they took, but the dragon had been dead for days when the scouts found her. Whatever magic they had left after the attack on