James Maxey: Dragonforge

She removed the tiara and placed it on the table.

There was no longer any need to hide who she was.

Indeed, now it was time to proudly announce to the world her true heritage.

She lifted Vendevorex's skull cap and brought it to her brow. Her eyes were locked on their reflection. They were cool hazel circles, devoid of sorrow or joy or hope or fear. They were the same sorts of eyes through which Vendevorex had looked upon the world. She was the inheritor of Vendevorex's power. And, she hoped, she was the inheritor of his wisdom and strength.

She lowered the skull cap onto her head, willing the metal to drape like cloth over the contours of her scalp. She closed her eyes to concentrate on the way the metal felt as it formed a helmet that matched her head and hers alone. Then, with a thought, she willed the malleable metal once more into solid silver.

She opened her eyes, expecting to find herself transformed. Instead, her mouth fell open as she let out a gasp. Behind her in the mirror, his golden eyes gleaming in the dim light of the room, stood Vendevorex.

Blasphet, the Murder God, woke to the familiar blackness. Since the fiasco of the Free City, Blasphet had been locked in the lowest chamber of the dungeon, his wings, legs, neck, and tail shackled to the bedrock. A dragon with a less vital mind might have been driven mad in the timeless dark. Blasphet philosophically accepted his confinement as an opportunity to contemplate the error of his ways, free from normal distractions.

Unfortunately, Blasphet still had a few abnormal distractions. When Shandrazel had captured him, he'd known of Blasphet's reputation for concealing poisoned needles and small tools among his feather-scales. He'd unceremoniously plucked Blasphet like an oversized chicken. Now his scales were growing back, with an itch surely unprecedented in all history. To lie in tomblike stillness and be aware of each new feather-scale seeping from its follicle, like a billion tiny insects burrowing from his hide… Was it possible his hatred of Shandrazel was even greater than his hatred of Albekizan?

Albekizan had been the central focus of his hatred for half a century. As those years passed, Blasphet had enjoyed a thousand enticing visions of how his brother might suffer. Over the years, his schemes had grown in complexity. Once, he'd imagined sawing off his brother's limbs, then hooking his mouth to a tube and force feeding him for months until Albekizan was a bloated blob. Then he would starve his brother, melting off the fat, reducing him to little more than a skeletal torso draped in an enormous sheet of flesh. Finally, he would cut Albekizan open, breaking and rearranging his bones, wiring and pinning them into the shape of a throne. Blasphet would rein over the kingdom from the living throne of his brother, leisurely looking down upon the former king's plaintive eyes, reveling in the despair he would find in them!

He sighed at the memory, and reminded himself that he was here to learn the error of his ways. His biggest error, he knew, was his need to torment his enemies rather than simply kill them.

For Shandrazel, there were no visions of elaborate torture thrones. He would simply close his jaws around the bastard and rip his throat out! The thought filled him with a warmth that defeated the chill of the bedrock.

Above, Blasphet heard the creak of a door. Once a day, guards would come to feed him gruel and muck up the pool of filth that Blasphet had excreted since their last visit. Blasphet hadn't yet killed any of his guards, though he had thought of a dozen possible ways. Perhaps today he would indulge himself. A faint light seeped through the darkness. The acrid odor of an oil lamp reached his nostrils as the guards descended the stairs.

Something was different. Blasphet cocked his head to better to catch the guards' footsteps. The sound was wrong. Whatever approached wasn't as heavy as earth-dragons. Humans? Perhaps coming to take revenge? It seemed so unfair. Human genocide had been Albekizan's vision; Blasphet had taken up the challenge only out of intellectual curiosity. He bore no hatred of mankind, as a whole. Humans had been the only species ever to grant him proper respect. Humans once worshipped him as a god-the Murder God. It hadn't been hard to convince an army of assassins and spies of his divinity. Humans believed in gods with the same obvious certainty with which they believed in weather. It was simply in their nature. At the height of his power, before Albekizan had crushed the cult, Blasphet's worshippers had numbered in the thousands.

Keys rattled in the lock of the iron door. Tendrils of light glowed around the edges of the frame. Slowly the door groaned open, pushed by a half dozen earth-dragons, their legs straining. A single earth-dragon should have been more than strong enough to open the heavy door.

Blasphet tilted his head to watch as the earth-dragons marched into the cell. Four more followed, carrying a man-sized bundle of canvas bound tightly with coils of rope. Silently, the earth-dragons advanced, rings of keys jangling in their fists. The six who had opened the door went to the shackles that held him. Without a word of explanation they crouched, slipped the keys into the locks, and turned them. Iron clattered on the stone floor as they pried the shackles loose, grunting with the effort-in the damp dungeon air, the shackles were already beginning to rust.

Blasphet had been staked to the floor on his back. His limbs felt weak, nearly paralyzed, but through sheer will he rolled to his side. The earth-dragons helped him to his belly, then stood back as Blasphet rose on trembling, unsteady legs. He stretched his wings, shaking them, loosening the damp grime that coated them.

As one, the earth-dragons knelt and lowered their tortoise-like heads until their brows touched the ground, their arms stretched before them in a position of prayer.

"You're humans, aren't you?" Blasphet asked, his voice raspy. His throat felt sore and raw where the shackle had been. "The motions of your bodies betray you."

One guard rose, looking up at Blasphet with dark, cloudy eyes. Certainly, they looked liked earth-dragons, and smelled like them as well, but these eyes weren't natural… they looked more like lifeless glass than a living organ of sight. The earth-dragon placed both hands upon his gray-green head, gave his skull a twist, and lifted it from his shoulders.

A human's head was revealed where the dragon's head had been. It was a young woman, her head shaved, a black tattoo of a serpent coiling above her right eye, writhing across her scalp, then snaking down her neck and shoulder. The other earth-dragons stood and removed their heads as well. Ten women, all in their teens, all with shaved heads. Even their eyebrows were missing.

"We are Sisters of the Serpent," the first one said, bowing her head. She spoke in a soft, reverential tone. "We are your humble servants, O Murder God. I am Colobi, serpent of the first order. Our disguises were never meant to deceive you."

"Of course," said Blasphet, flexing his fore-talons, feeling the blood flowing into them with a pleasant tingle. "What's in the bundle?"

"We knew you would be hungry for proper nourishment," Colobi said. "We kidnapped Valandant, Kanst's youngest."

Blasphet nodded, his eyes wide with admiration. Kanst was dead now, but he had been Blasphet's cousin, so Valandant was his own kin, albeit somewhat removed. Kanst had also been commander of Albekizan's armies. His widow and family would still be well-guarded. These Sisters of the Serpents were promising. It pleased him that his worshipers showed such initiative and competence.

They carried the bundle forth. It struggled feebly. Valandant was only two years old, little bigger than the girls who carried him. Of all the dragon races, only sun-dragons formed family units. The death of a child this young, following so soon on the deaths of Kanst and Albekizan, would cause grief of unimaginable sharpness for all his family.