Tag: Destiny

Dragon’s Ruin

FB_IMG_1572903609411She crouched motionless at the parapet, wondering if the army could even see her from the mainland. The scale of this place was almost beyond belief. She could feel the deep warmth of the setting sun on her face, but closed her eyes in determined effort to resist turning towards it. Absolute stillness, she had been warned; the slightest movement could be her undoing.

A sound like leather being shaken out deafened her, and a hurricane force gust nearly dislodged her from her post. Her eyes snapped open, her heart pounding while at the same time blood seemed to drain from her head. The creature rising from beneath the ruin on the opposite spire dwarfed even the palace upon which she knelt. She saw her full reflection in the pupil of its amber eye as the beast passed her. As another and another followed the first and circled above the gate, she knew that it was time.

She slowly rose to her feet and spread her arms wide. The first dragon whipped around, attracted by the movement, it’s fearsome jaws widening in the feral grin of the predator. She clenched her jaw, forcing down the panic threatening to overwhelm her, and tilted her chin with determined focus. This time she was aware. This time she was in control.

A heat bubbled through her like magma rising to the mouth of a volcano, ripping a scream from her tortured throat. But it was no scream as it escaped powerful jaws in a stream of liquid fire. She spread black wings that hid the fire of the sunset and rose into the air with a force that crumbled the parapet upon which she had stood.

The dragons echoed her roar, circling warily. The first of them emitted his own fire, almost white in its heat. Her challenge was accepted; she only hoped she was strong enough to win. If she wasn’t… but there was no more time for hoping.

The Time Cottage

It was the strangest hodgepodge of a house Jax had ever seen. The solid plank tower butting up against the back wall looked oddly out of place against the cobblestone and steeply pitched shingles. Placed where it was in the spray of a waterfall that seemed to feed nothing, it looked as if someone had snatched random bits from across time and space and pasted them together in homage to time itself.

The impression grew even stronger as the door opened and the occupant appeared. She was a wizened old woman, with incongruently red straggling strands of hair escaping a bonnet starched stiffer than the Magistrate. Her feet were clad in solid leather work boots, while a patchwork cloak barely hid a gown fit for the ballroom.

This dizzying figure rushed toward Jax, grinning widely. “Why, there you are!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him with a disconcerting familiarity that he was too thunderstruck to resist. “I was beginning to think you had lost your way and would never arrive after all!”

She released him only to grab his arms and hold him at arms length, surveying him with the critical eye of an aging aunt or fussing grandmother. “Well now, you could use some meat on your bones, but I can see there’s something going on behind that open mouth and those wide eyes. Yes, you’ll do.”

In an instant everything vanished, the house, waterfall, and woman together. Jax was left standing on the empty moor, staring into space like a daydreaming child, blinking in bewilderment. Feeling dazed, he turned around and headed back to the city as fast as his legs would take him, eager for the comfort of familiar surroundings. But as he topped a hill he stopped so suddenly he nearly lost his balance. The city was gone.FB_IMG_1569700668713