Friday, August 14, 2015

Excerpt From "Initiation and Other Stories Based on the Novel Dragon's Tempest"

For readers looking for a greater understanding of the novel Dragon's Tempest, Initiation might be what you're looking for. A collection of ten new stories, each story gives new insight into the characters of the original novel. Whether it's filling in some details between Arianna's Tale and Dragon's Tempest or continuing the story immediately after the conclusion of the original novel, all the stories found within its pages help enhance the plot of the entire Imperial Series. Initiation is available as a trade paperback or as an ebook (in most formats, including Kindle, Kobo, and Nook).

Read on for "Rising Darkness", one of the ten stories included in Initiation:

A loud crash and the sound of tearing hide filled the air. When Orlean turned, he saw one of the younger dragons with a foot inside a tent, looking confused and out of place. The Sky Lord on its back flushed and mumbled an apology to the distraught tent owners.
Orlean sighed. These young dragons were sometimes more of a hazard than they were worth. They broke things, got in the way, and occasionally stepped on people. And their Sky Lords weren’t any better. Young Kin, hardly out of diapers, did not make the most effective Sky Lords, but they seemed to be the only ones connecting to any of the hatchlings. An older Sky Lord hadn’t been bound to a dragon in more than twenty years.

It was shame, at least in Orlean’s mind. He was of the firm opinion that the younger Sky Lords should train until their thirtieth year before bonding to a dragon. But it wasn’t his decision. Sky Lords bonded to the dragon that matched the tattoo emblazoned on their abdomens. Age had nothing to do with it. If the dragon never hatched, the Sky Lord was never chosen. And a great talent was wasted.

As a gust of wind warned him of the approach of his own bonded dragon, he considered sending the free Sky Lords up into the mountains. There were plenty of wild dragons up there. Perhaps wild dragons could bond to the free Sky Lords and fill the ranks of the Lords once more. This wasn’t the first time he’d has such a thought. But it was the first time he’d seriously considered it.

His dragon thudded to the ground and rumbled over to his side, knocking over a stack of supplies with a long and flexible tail. Orlean flinched but said nothing. It’s not like the dragon could understand him anyway. They were stupid beasts, entirely lacking in basic communication skills. Oh, they were loyal enough, but stupid. Yelling at the poor beast wouldn’t accomplish anything.

Orlean reached out and brushed a hand over grey scales. His dragon wasn’t the prettiest of the Tribes, but the large male was certainly the strongest. And the beast had served him well over the years. As First Sky Lord of the First Tribe, Orlean and his dragon were responsible for patrolling the boundaries of the Wastes and ensuring that their way of life remained pure and untouched. But this was a difficult thing to do as he and his dragon grew older. These young pups just didn’t have the experience to be of any real help.

With those thoughts foremost in his mind, Orlean climbed onto his dragon’s back and urged the beast into the air.

***

The morning flew by as Orlean soared on the back of his dragon. Powerful wings sliced through the air and muscles bunched and coiled beneath his body. Orlean shifted his weight with the thrusts of the dragon to minimize the strain on the beast’s wings. He wasn’t the only one getting older.

As the sun rose overhead, Orlean rotated his shoulders to relieve the tension building there. At just over sixty years old, he wasn’t as young as he used to be. He was just waiting for the day when one Sky Lord was qualified enough to do this job. Then he could retire and spend his days carving dragons out of old bones. A much more respectable thing for an elderly man to do.

They were about to turn back for the day when something caught his eye. There, on the eastern horizon, was a strange form that appeared dark and twisted. At first he thought it was nothing more than a wisp of cloud. But it was moving too fast, and against the wind. No, it wasn’t a cloud.

A shift of his legs and a low clicking sound told his dragon to move toward it. Some instinct told him to turn back, to seek help, but he couldn’t do that until he knew what this thing was. Never one to run from any threat, Orlean and his dragon moved ever forward, ever closer to the wisp of cloud that was no cloud.

They drew closer to the darkness and it grew colder. It never grew cold in the Wastes. With the sun beating down and the mountains to trap the heat, the Wastes were always warm enough to bake a man if he wasn’t careful. The heat could kill, but it was never cold, not here. Despite this well-known fact, Orlean shivered though his thin leather breeches and short tunic.

Closer still and the sun itself seemed to dim. Orlean glanced up, but there were no clouds to block the sun’s rays. It was simply darker than it had been. He’d never seen anything like it, and it filled his heart with a cold dread.

But he still didn’t have anything to report. So on he went, urging his dragon forward. The dragon balked as they continued into the darkness, but Orlean refused to turn back. He couldn’t return to his Tribe with the news that there was a dark cloud in the east. He needed something more concrete. He needed information.

And the only way to get that information was to keep moving forward. So when the dragon balked again, Orlean dug his heels into the soft flesh behind the forelegs of the beast. They were going, trepidation or no trepidation. There was no other option. Not yet.

The air grew thick and it became difficult to breathe. His dragon had to fight to stay airborne. The very air they both inhaled turned into a toxic fume and Sky Lord and dragon slowly drifted downward. Orlean might have tried to keep his dragon in the air, but his head felt heavy. He leaned forward until his forehead rested on the dragon’s powerful neck. His eyes drifted closed as the air turned to black smoke.


***

Molten flame tore up his nose and down his throat, pooling in his lungs. His chest burned for an instant before he coughed and the flames ripped back up his throat, scorching his mouth and nose. Pain consumed him, filled his every sense, until nothing else existed. He vomited and it was like coughing up liquid fire.


It was some time before he heard the sounds. Something scraping against bone. Tearing flesh. A tongue lapping at some unidentified liquid. A moment later he could detect the metallic scent of blood and something more putrid. Someone or something was leaking fluid from the intestines. Maybe the bowels. Orlean panicked, thinking that smell came from his own bowels.


He struggled to move, to search his body for wounds, but his arms were weighed down by something heavy. He pulled against the bonds that held him as his eyes flew open.


The first thing he saw was his dragon. The poor thing was lying on its side, wings twisted at what might have been a painful angle. Except that this dragon would never feel pain again. The dragon’s head was thrown back and Orlean could clearly see the large eyes, dull with death. Those eyes would never shine again.


Orlean tried to rise, tried to go to his dragon, but he was held back. He moved his head from side to side and his eyes widened. Thick chains were wrapped around his wrists. The chains were attached to spikes which had been driven into the hard earth. A quick glance down revealed his ankles similarly bound. He pulled on the chains, but he was well and truly caught.

A low growl came from the dragon and Orlean turned his head, hoping the dragon was alive but knowing it was not. He could sense the emptiness on his belly, knew instinctively that the tattoo had faded as it always did when a Sky Lord’s dragon was killed. The dragon was dead and could not have growled.

But the growl had come from somewhere. Orlean’s breath caught as something large and thin moved behind the dragon’s corpse. A pair of wings, thinner and finer than a dragon’s, rose up from behind the dragon and snapped through the air. A serpentine head appeared and Orlean jumped. It looked like a dragon, but not any dragon he’d ever seen. Its fangs were too long for a dragon and they dripped with what he assumed was poison. Dragons were not poisonous. As it moved around the dragon’s dead body, Orlean noted that its long and thin form, almost like a snake, was as long as a dragon but not half so wide. It had legs, but it moved across the dusty Wastes with powerful thrusts of its snake-like body. The legs ended in sharp claws, so Orlean could only assume they were used for ripping and tearing into enemies in battle.

The thing was covered in blood and gore. Its fangs dripped with it and Orlean realized it had been feasting on the dragon’s flesh. Orlean felt gorge rise in his throat as the thing slithered toward him.

“What do you think of my pet?” came a deep voice from somewhere behind him.

Orlean craned his neck back in an attempt to locate the voice. All he saw was a dark mist. Soon this mist became thick enough to be a cloud. And eventually this cloud became a man. The man was cloaked in black silk, his hair just as dark as the slippery fabric, but it was his eyes that held Orlean’s attention. Those eyes had no whites. They were simply darkness. Or the darkness that darkness fears.

Staring into those eyes, Orlean felt his chest grow tight. As the man moved forward, Orlean couldn’t resist the urge to flinch away. Something about the man with skin as pale as moonlight caused his body to tremble. Orlean closed his eyes and tried to summon some vestige of magick, something to defend himself, but all he felt was emptiness.

“Oh, it’s well and truly gone,” the dark figure said. “Your dragon is dead and with it your magicks. You’re mine now. Whether you live or join your dragon in death is up to me.”

Orlean heard the subtle growl of the creature as it slithered around the dragon’s corpse but he refused to open his eyes. “Who are you?” There might have been better questions but none came immediately to mind.

The hiss of fabric and the brush of silk against his cheek let Orlean know that the man was hunched down beside him. Or perhaps kneeling. “I am Darcet. But you will learn to address me as Master.”

Now Orlean did summon his courage and opened his eyes, gazing into the overwhelming darkness. His heart constricted, but he managed to keep his voice relatively steady. “I am Kin. We have no master.”

A disturbing smile crossed the man’s face. “You will learn.”


***

Orlean squeezed his eyes shut and was rewarded with a blinding pain across his abdomen. His eyes snapped open as the flame withdrew, leaving his body in peace. But his mind … nothing could leave his mind in peace.


He was lying naked on an altar of black stone in a tower of metal and obsidian. Or what appeared to be obsidian. The chains bit into his wrists and ankles, holding him in place. His torso was a mass of cuts, burns, and bruises. All a result of trying to hide, trying to close his eyes against the images he could not escape.


All around the altar were obsidian globes, and each globe glowed with a series of images. The pictures were so clear he might have been watching the events in person. He might as well have been, for the globes channeled both sight and sound.


The visions tore at his heart. He could see dragons and their Sky Lords tangling with what Darcet had called wyverns. The dragons were most assuredly losing. They might be larger and stronger, but they were also slower. And the wyverns had a sly intelligence that the dragons just couldn’t match. The dragons might have magick, magick that was channeled through their Sky Lords, but the wyverns seemed to repel every bit of magick thrown at them. The magic didn’t even touch the serpentine beasts. It was as if any magick was nulled when it came within just a few feet of the writhing wyverns.


Other globes showed images of shamans, those among the Kin who could wield magick without dragons, being slaughtered by the dozens. Their magicks were as ineffective as those the Sky Lords commanded. Orlean could see the tattoos of his own Tribe, the First Tribe, and knew his friends and family would not survive the attack. But it was more than that. The tattoos of other Tribes came to his eyes and he knew that all the Kin were a part of this. This man who controlled the wyverns was destroying all his people, not simply one Tribe.

“Why?” he finally gasped, desperate for an answer.

Darcet’s voice floated through the air. “Why? Why you? Or why them?”

Orlean craned his neck but could see only smoke and mist in the darkened chamber. “Why … us?” he asked the mist.

The darkness grew darker as Darcet took on his man-shape again. He strode forward with a hiss a silk and came to stand beside Orlean’s bound body. “You are Kin.” White hands stroked over Orlean’s sun-kissed flesh as Darcet licked his lips.

“But why?” He tried to ignore the hands that touched him and refused to look at Darcet’s face. The man was too beautiful to be evil, yet evil he certainly was. To look was to lose his mind, and Orlean knew it.

Darcet drew back his lips in a frightening snarl. “You ask that? You who are chosen by the Light, favored by my brilliant sister?”

A gloved hand rose in front of Orlean’s eyes. As that hand grew and twisted, Orlean let out his first real scream.


***

Collapsing back against the stone, Orlean tried to breathe through the pain. But his throat was a bloody mass and his chest was nothing more than a gaping hole. His still-beating heart lay on the cold stone altar somewhere near his feet. Orlean thought that he could still hear it throbbing and beating, echoing through his ears, but he knew it was nothing more than his own vivid imagination.


He hurt, but it was in a detached sort of way. It should hurt more. But then there were the waves of pleasure that tightened his body in ways a man his age rarely experienced. The pleasure distracted him from the pain, gave him something to focus on. Even something to look forward to. Before long he was just waiting for the pain, wishing for the pain, because he knew it would be closely followed by the intense pleasure that would wash over his body and give him sweet relief.


Darcet stood over him, and Orlean knew, he simply knew, that this man’s magick was the source of both the pleasure and the pain. And it was that same magick that kept him alive without a heart to sustain him. At first Orlean let his being fill with hatred, but this hatred faded to mere resentment. Candlemarks passed and even the resentment faded, leaving behind only the purest desire.


As Orlean writhed and gasped, Darcet spoke to him in a soft voice. The tone was as musical as it was soothing. Darcet spoke of the wyverns and how he himself had formed them from the dead bodies of both dragons and a sea serpent called a muradeen. He spoke of his sister, a woman named Crystal, a woman as good as he was evil. He spoke of the dragons that he hated for their brilliant perfection. He spoke of elves, distant ancestors of the Kin and how they could not be corrupted.


Through all these words, Orlean began to understand. Corruption. That’s what this was all about. Corruption and power. Darcet wanted to corrupt the servants of the Light, to turn them into his own minions. But his plans hadn’t seen much success. He’d wanted to corrupt the elves, turn them to his purposes, but the elves simply died. They could not be turned. So Darcet had decided to corrupt those most closely related to elves. The Kin. Part elf, part man, but evolved to their own species, they were as close to elves as you could get without resorting to half-breeds.

And then there were the dragons. For whatever reason, Darcet saw the dragons as a threat. So he’d given his wyverns orders to destroy the dragons at all costs. Those images still played in the dark crystals surrounding the altar, though the images were fewer than they had been. There were fewer and fewer dragons gliding over the Wastes and none survived once they were found by the wyverns. Orlean guessed that in less than two days’ time, all dragons would be gone.

Except perhaps for the wild dragons. They were larger and faster than the bound dragons. Whenever a wyvern came near one, the dragon managed to escape, fleeing into the great Southern Range. But not once did the wild dragons try to fight, try to come to the aid of their bound brethren. They simply fled the Wastes, winging to the north.

Stupid beasts, Orlean thought to himself. He supposed it was too much to expect that the wild dragons might do something to stop this … genocide, Orlean realized. The wyverns were exterminating any dragon they could find. It was genocide. There was no word that better described the extermination of the great beasts.

Another wave of pleasure had Orlean looking away from the globes and into Darcet’s dark eyes. Those eyes seemed to sparkle now, and Orlean shivered. Those unnatural eyes framed by the delicate features of Darcet’s face were terrifying. A hand came into view and danced with black flame. Placing that hand in the gaping hole of Orlean’s chest, Darcet smiled gently.

Black flame glittered and shone from Orlean’s chest and the bound man screamed. His flesh was torn asunder by claws as his bones turned to ash. Air could no longer reach his lungs and his vision was blurred by thick smoke. And though it all he could only wait for the pain to end and the pleasure to begin.

And so it did, but it was different this time. A gentle breeze brought air to his seared lungs as cool water soothed his flesh. He was whole, or as whole as he had been before the flame had danced through his body. Ice was plunged into his chest, but it was so much better than the black flame and its unending pain. He would worship anything that promised such sweet relief.

Darcet chuckled, but Orlean didn’t care. He cared for nothing but the cool peace he felt now. As his vision cleared, he looked down at his own body and could not recognize it. The flesh was charred and blackened, the limbs broken and twisted. The bonds had fallen away but he still did not move.

The hole in his chest was still there, but from it glittered a frightening black light. Orlean glanced at Darcet in confusion.

The man smiled and stroked a gentle hand around the ragged edges of the gaping hole. “Your heart is mine. Your body is mine. Your soul is mine.” Darcet leaned closer and laid a kiss on Orlean’s torn lips. “You will live as I bid. Defy me and …”

Pain ripped through Orlean’s body and a twisted cry came from his lips.

“But serve me well and …”

The pain disappeared, swallowed by the soothing pleasure that tightened Orlean’s body and left him gasping for more. Darcet awaited an answer, but still Orlean hesitated. Until another bolt of pain racked his aching body.

Orlean did the only thing he could. Putting his friends and family from his mind, Orlean rolled toward Darcet and allowed himself to fall from the altar. Once at Darcet’s feet, Orlean forced his twisted body into a kneeling position. His own clawed hands were awkward and gouged the stone beneath his feet. Finally, he bowed his head, putting himself willingly at Darcet’s mercy.

Darcet trailed a hand along Orlean’s jaw, raising the ruined face to better see it. “Will you serve?”

“I will.” Those words came uneasily to his lips, but they did come.

“Will you tame the shamans and Sky Lords?”

“I will.” The answers were coming with greater speed now.

“And will you rule the Wastes in my name?”

“I will.” His hesitation disappeared and with it, the last of what made him Orlean.

A truly happy smile lit Darcet’s face. “Then rise, my dear Rider. Rise and do to some of the others what I have done to you. Build my numbers. Increase my strength. Kill the dragons, convert or sacrifice the Sky Lords and shamans, and rule the Wastes as I would.”

The Rider stood with some difficulty, eventually finding his feet but still keeping his head bowed out of respect. “With pleasure.” And it was no lie.


Darcet laughed again and the sound of shattering glass filled the night air. His body became nothing but smoke and even this eventually drifted off, leaving only his laughter echoing through the dark tower. That and a dark wyvern that coiled and twisted, awaiting the Rider’s orders. The Rider ran a hand over the slick scales and smiled.